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BIRDS 

THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS 



BY 



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FLORENCE A. MERRIAM 



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Copyright, 1889, 
By FLORENCE A. MERRIAM. 

All rights reserved. 



This edition of " Birds Through an Opera-Glass" 
is issued for The Chautauqua Press by Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., publishers of the work. 



By Tranaf#r 

Mv ,cf .925 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



INTRODUCTION 



Wherever there are people there are birds, 
so it makes comparatively little difference where 
you live, if you are only in earnest about getting 
acquainted with your feathered neighbors. Even 
in a Chicago back yard fifty-seven kinds of birds 
have been seen in a year, and in a yard in Port- 
land, Connecticut, ninety-one species have been 
recorded. Twenty-six kinds are known to nest 
in the city of Washington, and in the parks and 
cemeteries of San Francisco in winter I have 
found twenty-two kinds, while seventy-six are 
recorded for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and a hun- 
dred and forty-two for Central Park, New York. 

There are especial advantages in beginning to 
study birds in the cities, for by going to the mu- 
seums you can compare the bird skins with the 
birds you have seen in the field. And, moreover, 
you can get an idea of the grouping of the differ- 
ent families which will help you materially in 
placing the live bird when you meet him at home. 

If you do not live in the city, as I have said 
elsewhere, " shrubby, village dooryards, the trees 
of village streets, and orchards, roadside fences, 



iv INTRODUCTION 

overgrown pastures, and the borders of brooks 
and rivers are among the best places to look for 
birds." i 

When going to watch birds, "provided with 
opera-glass and note-book, and dressed in incon- 
spicuous colors, proceed to some good birdy place, 
— the bushy bank of a stream or an old juniper 
pasture, — and sit down in the undergrowth or 
against a concealing tree-trunk, with your back 
to the sun, to look and listen in silence. You 
will be able to trace most songs to their singers 
by finding which tree the song comes from, and 
then watching for movement, as birds are rarely 
motionless long at a time when singing. It will 
be a help if, besides writing a careful descrip- 
tion of both bird and song, you draw a rough 
diagram of the bird's markings, and put down 
the actual notes of his song as nearly a£ may be. 

" If you have time for only a walk through the 
woods, go as quietly as possible and stop often, lis- 
tening to catch the notes which your footsteps have 
drowned. Timid birds may often be attracted 
by answering their calls, for it is very reassuring 
to be addressed in one's native tongue." 2 

Birds' habits differ in different localities, and 
as this book was written in the East, many birds 
are spoken of as common which Western readers 
will find rare or wanting; but nearly the same 

1 Birds of Village and Field. 

2 Maynard's Birds of Washington. Introduction by F. A. M. 



INTRODUCTION V 

families of birds are found in all parts of the 
United States, so that, if not able to name your 
bird exactly, at least you will be able to tell who 
his relatives are. 

Boys who are interested in watching the coming 
of the birds from the south in spring, and their 
return from- the north in the fall, can get blank 
migration schedules by applying to the Biological 
Survey, Department of Agriculture, Washing- 
ton, D. C. ; and teachers and others who want 
material for bird work can get, free on applica- 
tion, the publications of the Biological Survey, 
which show how the food of birds affects the 
farm and garden. Much additional information 
can be obtained from the secretaries of the State 
Audubon Societies, and their official organ, " Bird- 
Lore." 

Photography is coming to hold an important 
place in nature work, as its notes cannot be ques- 
tioned, and the student who goes afield armed 
with opera-glass and camera will not only add 
more to our knowledge than he who goes armed 
with a gun, but will gain for himself a fund of 
enthusiasm and a lasting store of pleasant mem- 
ories. For more than all the statistics is the 
sanity and serenity of spirit that comes when we 
step aside from the turmoil of the world to hold 
quiet converse with Nature. 

FLORENCE A. MERRIAM. 
Washington, D. C, May 11, 1899. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Robin 4 

II. The Crow 10 

III. The Bluebird 14 

IV. The Chimney Swift; Chimney " Swallow' ' . 16 
V. Catbird . 18 

VI. Keel-Tailed Blackbird ; Crow Blackbird ; Bronzed 

Graekle 20 

VII. Bobolink; Reed-Bird; Rice-Bird ... 27 

VIII. Ruffed Grouse ; Partridge .... 32 

IX. Ruby-Throated Humming-Bird .... 36 

X. Meadow-Lark 40 

XI. Black-Capped Chickadee ; Titmouse ... 42 

XII. Cuckoo ; Rain Crow . . . . . 46 

XIII. YeUow Hammer; Flicker 48 

XIV. Baltimore Oriole ; Fire-Bird ; Golden Robin ; Hang- 

Nest 52 

XV. Barn Swallow 55 

XVI. Belted Kingfisher 57 

XVII. Chip-Bird or Chippy ; Hair-Bird ; Chipping Spar- 
row ; Social Sparrow 60 

XVIII. Song Sparrow 6Q 

XIX. Blue Jay 69 

XX. Yellow-Bird; American Goldfinch; Thistle-Bird 76 

XXI. Phoebe 80 

XXII. King-Bird ; Bee Martin 83 

XXIII. Wood Pewee 85 

XXIV. Least Flycatcher . .87 

XXV. Red-Winged Blackbird ..... 89 

XXVI. Hairy Woodpecker . . . . . . 92 



vin CONTENTS. 

XXVII. Downy Woodpecker 99 

XXVIII. White-Bellied Nuthatch ; Devil-Down Head . 100 

XXIX. Cowbird 105 

XXX. White-Throated Sparrow .... 109 

XXXI. Cedar-Bird; Waxwing .... 112 

XXXII. Chewink; Towhee 115 

XXXIII. Indigo-Bird 119 

XXXIV. Purple Finch 122 

XXXV. Red-Eyed Vireo 124 

XXXVI. Yellow-Throated Vireo 129 

XXXVII. Warbling Vireo 131 

XXXVIII. Oven-Bird ; Golden-Crowned Thrush . . 132 

XXXIX. Junco ; Slate-Colored Snowbird . . . 138 

XL. Kinglets 140 

XLI. Snow Bunting ; Snowflake .... 144 

XLII. Scarlet Tanager 146 

XLIII. Brown Thrasher 150 

XLIV. Rose-Breasted Grosbeak 153 

XLV. Whippoorwill 155 j/ 

XLVI. Winter Wren 155 

XL VII. Red-Headed Woodpecker .... 159 

XLVIII. Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker .... 160 

XLIX. Great-Crested Flycatcher .... 163 

L. Bank Swallow ; Sand Martin .... 165 

LI. Cave Swallow; Cliff Swallow ... 166 

LII. Crossbills 166 

LIII. Night-Hawk ; Bull Bat ... . 169 
LIV. Grass Finch; Vesper Sparrow; Bay -Winged 

Bunting 171 

LV. Tree Sparrow 172 

LVI. White-Crowned Sparrow . . . .173 

LVII. Field Sparrow ; Bush Sparrow . . . 174 

LVIII. Fox Sparrow 175 

LIX. Brown Creeper 176 

WARBLERS. 
LX. Summer Yellow-Bird; Golden Warbler; Yel- 
low Warbler 179 

LXI. Redstart 180 



CONTENTS. ix 

LXII. Black and White Creeping Warbler . . 184 
LXIII. Blackburnian Warbler; Hemlock Warbler; 

Orange-Throated Warbler . . . 186 

LXIV. Black-Throated Blue Warbler . . .187 

LXV. Yellow Humped Warbler ; Myrtle Warbler 189 

LXVI. Chestnut-Sided Warbler 190 

LXVIL Maryland Yellow-Throat ; Black Masked 

Ground Warbler 191 

LXVIII. Thrushes 193 f 

LXIX. Wilson's Thrush ; Veery ; Tawny Thrush . 198 
LXX. Hermit Thrush 202 

APPENDIX. 
Pigeon-Holes for the Perching Birds mentioned in this 

book . 206 

General Family Characteristics of Birds Treated . . 208 
Arbitrary Classifications of Birds Described . • • 211 
Books for Reference 220 



BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 



We are so in the habit of focusing our spy- 
glasses on our human neighbors that it seems an 
easy matter to label them and their affairs, but 
when it comes to birds, — alas ! not only are there 
legions of kinds, but, to our bewildered fancy, 
they look and sing and act exactly alike. Yet 
though our task seems hopeless at the outset, be- 
fore we recognize the conjurer a new world of in- 
terest and beauty has opened before us. 

The best way is the simplest. Begin with the 
commonest birds, and train your ears and eyes by 
pigeon-holing every bird you see and every song 
you hear. Classify roughly at first, — the finer 
distinctions will easily be made later. Suppose, 
for instance, you are in the fields on a spring 
morning. Standing still a moment, you hear 
what sounds like a confusion of songs. You think 
you can never tell one from another, but by listen- 
ing carefully you at once notice a difference. Some 
are true songs, with a definite melody, — and tune, 
if one may use that word, — like the song of several 
of the sparrows, with three high notes and a run 



2 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

down the scale. Others are only monotonous 
trills, always the same two notes, varying only in 
length and intensity, such as that of the chipping 
bird, who makes one's ears fairly ache as he sits 
in the sun and trills to himself, like a complacent 
prima donna. Then there is always plenty of gos- 
siping going on, chippering and chattering that 
does not rise to the dignity of song, though it adds 
to the general jumble of sounds ; but this should 
be ignored at first, and only the loud songs lis- 
tened for. When the trill and the elaborate song- 
are once contrasted, other distinctions are easily 
made. The ear then catches the quality of songs. 
On the right the plaintive note of the meadow- 
lark is heard, while out of the grass at the left 
comes the rollicking song of the bobolink. 

Having begun sorting sounds, you naturally 
group sights, and so find yourself parceling out 
the birds by size and color. As the robin is a 
well-known bird, he serves as a convenient unit 
of measure — an ornithological foot. If you call 
anything from a humming-bird to a robin small, 
and from a robin to a crow large, you have a 
practical division line, of use in getting your 
bearings. And the moment you give heed to col- 
ors, the birds will no longer look alike. To sim- 
plify matters, the bluebird, the oriole with his 
orange and black coat, the scarlet tanager with 
his flaming plumage, and all the other bright birds 
can be classed together ; while the sparrows, fly- 



BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 3 

catchers, thrushes, and vireos may be thought of 
as the dull birds. 

When the crudest part of the work is done, and 
your eye and ear naturally seize differences of size, 
color, and sound, the interesting part begins. You 
soon learn to associate the birds with fixed local- 
ities, and once knowing their favorite haunts, 
quickly find other clues to their ways of life. 

By going among the birds, watching them 
closely, comparing them carefully, and writing 
down, while in the field, all the characteristics of 
every new bird seen, — its locality, size, color, de- 
tails of marking, song, food, flight, eggs, nest, 
and habits, — you will come easily and naturally 
to know the birds that are riving about you. The 
first law of field work is exact observation, but 
not only are you more likely to observe accurately 
if what you see is put in black and white, but 
you will find it much easier to identify the birds 
from your notes than from memory. 

With these hints in mind, go to look for your 
friends. Carry a pocket note-book, and above all, 
take an opera or field glass with you. Its rapid 
adjustment may be troublesome at first, but it 
should be the " inseparable article " of a careful 
observer. If you begin work in spring, don't 
start out before seven o'clock, because the confu- 
sion of the matins is discouraging — there is too 
much to see and hear. But go as soon as possi- 
ble after breakfast, for the birds grow quiet and 



4 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

fly to the woods for their nooning earlier and 
earlier as the weather gets warmer. 

You will not have to go far to find your first 
bird. 



THE ROBIN. 

Next to the crow, the robin is probably our best 
known bird ; but as a few of his city friends have 
never had the good fortune to meet him, and as he 
is to be our " unit of measure," it behooves us to 
consider him well. He is, as every one knows, a 
domestic bird, with a marked bias for society. 
Everything about him bespeaks the self-respecting 
American citizen. He thinks it no liberty to dine 
in your front yard, or build his house in a crotch of 
your piazza, with the help of the string you have 
inadvertently left within reach. Accordingly, he 
fares well, and keeps fat on cherries and straw- 
berries if the supply of fish-worms runs low. Mr. 
Robin has one nervous mannerism — he jerks his 
tail briskly when excited. But he is not always 
looking for food as the woodpeckers appear to be, 
nor flitting about with nervous restlessness like the 
warblers, and has, on the whole, a calm, dignified 
air. With time to meditate when he chooses, like 
other sturdy, well-fed people, his reflections usually 
take a cheerful turn ; and when he lapses into a. 
poetical mood, as he often does at sunrise and 



THE ROBIN. 5 

sunset, sitting on a branch in the softened light 
and whispering a little song to himself, his senti- 
ment is the wholesome every-day sort, with none 
of the sadness or longing of his cousins, the 
thrushes, but full of contented appreciation of the 
beautiful world he lives in. 



Unlike some of his human friends, his content 
does not check his activity. He is full of buoyant 
life. He may always be heard piping up above 
the rest of the daybreak chorus, and I have seen 
him sit on top of a stub in a storm when it seemed 
as if the harder it rained the louder and more ju- 
bilantly he sang. He has plenty of pluck and 
industry, too, for every season he dutifully accepts 
the burden of seeing three or four broods of bird 
children through all the dangers of cats, hawks, 



6 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

and first flights ; keeping successive nestfuls of 
gaping mouths supplied with worms all the sum- 
mer through. 

His red breast is a myth and belongs to his 
English namesake ; and it must be owned that 
his is a homely reddish brown that looks red only 
when the sunlight falls on it. His wife's breast 
is even less red than his — in fact, she looks as if 
the rain had washed off most of her color. But, 
perhaps, had they been beautiful they would have 
been vain, and then, alas for the robins we know 
and love now. When the children make their 
debut, they are more strikingly homely than their 
parents ; possibly because we have known the old 
birds until, like some of our dearest friends, their 
plainness has become beautiful to us. In any case, 
the eminently speckled young gentlemen that come 
out with their new tight-fitting suits and awkward 
ways do not meet their father's share of favor. 

Perhaps the nest they come from accounts for 
their lack of polish. It is compact and strong, 
built to last, and to keep out the rain ; but with 
no thought of beauty. In building their houses 
the robins do not follow our plan, but begin with 
the frame and work in. When the twigs and 
weed stems are securely placed they put on the 
plaster — a thick layer of mud that the bird 
moulds with her breast till it is as hard and 
smooth as a plaster cast. And inside of all, for 
cleanliness and comfort, they lay a soft lining of 



THE ROBIN. 7 

dried grass. This is the typical nest, but of course, 
there are marked variations from it. Usually it 
is firmly fixed in the crotch of a branch or close 
to the body of the tree where its weight can be 
supported. 

But who does not know instances of oddly 
placed nests outside of trees ? The " American 
Naturalist" records one "on the top of a long 
pole, which stood without support in an open barn- 
yard," and Audubon notes one within a few feet 
of a blacksmith's anvil. A number of interesting 
sites have come within my notice. Among them 
are : the top of a blind ; an eave trough ; a shingle 
that projected over the inner edge of an open shed ; 
and, most singular of all, one inside a milk-house, 
set precariously on the rim of a barrel that lay on 
its side, just above the heads of the men who not 
only appeared both night and morning with alarm- 
ingly big milk pails, but made din enough in ply- 
ing a rattling creaky pump handle to have sent 
any ordinary bird bolting through the window. 

Robins usually nest comparatively high, though 
Audubon tells of a nest found on a bare rock on 
the ground, and this summer I found one in the 
crotch of a small tree only two and a half feet 
from the earth. It was near a hen yard, so per- 
haps Madam Robin was following the fashion by 
laying her eggs near the ground. In any case, 
she was on visiting terms with the hen-roost, for, 
singularly enough, there were feathers plastered 



8 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

about the adobe wall, though none inside. Per- 
haps the weather was too warm for a feather bed ! 
— or was this frivolous lady bird thinking so 
much of fashion and adornment she could spare 
no time on homely comfort ? 
Longfellow says : 

11 There are no birds in last year's nest," 

but on a brace in an old cow shed I know of, there 
is a robin's nest that has been used for several 
years. A layer of new material has been added 
to the old structure each time, so that it is now 
eight inches high and bids fair soon to rival the 
fourteen story flat houses of New York. A re- 
markable case is given in the " Naturalist " of a 
robin that had no " bump of locality," and distri- 
buted its building material impartially over nearly 
thirty feet of the outer cornice of a house. 

You may look for robius almost anywhere, but 
they usually prefer dry open land, or the edge of 
woodland, being averse to the secluded life of 
their relatives, the thrushes, who build id the for- 
est. Those I find in the edge of the woods are 
much shyer than those living about the house, 
probably from the same reason that robins and 
others of our most friendly Eastern birds are wild 
and suspicious in the uninhabited districts of the 
West — or, who will say there are no recluses 
among birds as well as men ? 

The flight and song of the robin are character- 
istic. The flight is rapid, clear cut, and straight. 



THE ROBIX. 9 

Unlike many birds, he moves as if he were going 
somewhere. His voice is a strong clear treble, 
loud and cheerful, but he is not a musician, and 
has no one set song. His commonest call has two 
parts, each of three notes run together ; the first 
with -a rising, the last with a falling inflection, 
like, tril-la-ree, tril-la-rah ; trll-la-ree^ tril-la-rah. 
But he has a number of calls, and you must be 
familiar with the peculiar treble quality of his 
note to avoid confusing it with others. 
In the fall, Lowell says, 

11 The sobered robin hunger-silent now, 
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer," 

and this " sobered" suggests a question. Why is 
it that as soon as robins form flocks, they become 
shy ? Is it because they are more often shot at 
when migrating in large numbers ; or because, as 
Mr. William Hubbell Fisher suggests, they have 
left their homes, and so have lost confidence in 
the surroundings and people ? 

In some localities they live on cedar-berries in 
the fall, but here they are well satisfied with 
mountain ash berries, wild cherries, and ungath- 
ered crab apples. Speaking of their food, what a 
pity that anglers cannot contract with them for a 
supply of bait ! Woe betide the fish-worm that 
stirs the grass on the lawn within their hearing ! 
How wise they look as they cock their heads on 
one side and stand, erect and motionless, peering 
down on the ground. And what a surprise it 



10 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

must be to the poor worm when they suddenly tip 
forward, give a few rapid hops, and diving into 
the grass drag him out of his retreat. Though 
they run from a chicken, robins will chase chip- 
munks and fight with red squirrels in defense of 
their nests or young. 



IL 

THE CROW. 

The despised crow is one of our most interest- 
ing birds. His call is like the smell of the brown 
furrows in spring — life is more sound and whole- 
some for it. Though the crow has no song, what 
a variety of notes and tones he can boast! In 
vocabulary, he is a very Shakespeare among birds. 
Listening to a family of Frenchmen, though you 
do not know a word of French, you easily guess 
the temper and drift of their talk, and so it is in 
listening to crows — tone, inflection, gesture, all 
betray their secrets. One morning last October 
I caught, in this way, a spicy chapter in crow fam- 
ily discipline. 

I was standing in a meadow of rich aftermath 
lying between a stony pasture and a small piece 
of woods, when a young crow flew over my head, 
cawing softly to himself. He flew straight west 
toward the pasture for several seconds, and then, 
as if an idea had come to him, turned his head 



THE CROW. 11 

and neck around in the intelligent crow fashion, 
circled back to the woods, lit, and cawed vocifer- 
ously to three other crows tiU they came over 
across the pasture. 

After making them all circle over my head, per- 
haps -merely as a blind, he took them back to his 
perch where he wanted them to go beechnutting 
— or something else. Whatever it was, they evi- 
dently scorned his childishness, for they flew back 
to their tree across the field as fast as they had 
come. This put him in a pet, and he woidd not 
budge, but sat there sputtering like a spoiled 
child. To everything he said, whether in a com- 
plaining or teasing tone, the same gruff paternal 
caw came back from the pasture. " Come along ! " 
it seemed to say. To this the refractory son would 
respond, " I won't." They kept it up for several 
minutes, but at last paternal authority conquered, 
and the big boy, making a wide detour, flew slowly 
and reluctantly back to his family. He lit on a 
low branch under them, and when the father gave 
a gruff " I should think it was time you came," he 
defiantly shook his tail and cleaned his bill. After 
a few moments he condescended to make a low 
half sullen, half subdued remark, but when the 
family all started off again he sat and scolded 
some time before he would follow them, and I 
suspect he compromised matters then only because 
he did not want to be left behind. 

The " intelligence of the crow " has become a 



12 BIRDS THROUGH AN, OPERA-GLASS. 

platitude, but when we hear of his cracking clams 
by dropping them on a fence, coming to roost with 
the hens in cold weather, and — in the case of a 
tame crow — opening a door by lighting on the 
latch, his originality is a surprise. A family near 
here had much merriment over the gambols of a 
pet crow named Jim. Whenever he saw the gar- 
dener passing to and fro between the house and 
garden, he would fly down from the trees, light on 
his hat, and ride back and forth. He liked to 
pick the bright blossoms, particularly pansies and 
scarlet geraniums, and would not only steal bright 
colored worsteds and ribbons, but tear all the yel- 
low covers from any novels he came across. When 
any one went to the vegetable garden he showed 
the most commendable eagerness to help with the 
work, being anxious to pick whatever was wanted 
- — from raspberries and currants to the little cu- 
cumbers gathered for pickling. 

The sight of the big black puppy waddling 
along wagging high in air a long black tail in- 
congruously finished off with a tipping of white 
hairs was too much for Jim's sobriety. Down he 
would dive, give a nip at the hairs, and be gravely 
seated on a branch just out of reach by the time 
Bruno had turned to snap at him. Let the puppy 
move on a step, and down the mischief would come 
again, and so the two would play — sometimes for 
more than half an hour at a time. Then again, 
the joke would take a more practical turn, for, in- 



TEE CROW. 13 

stead of flying overhead when Bruno looked back, 
Jim would steal the bone the puppy had been 
gnawing. 

The crow was happy as long as any one would 
play with him, and never tired of flying low over 
the ground with a string dangling from his bill for 
the children to run after. Another favorite play 
was to hold on to a string or small stick with his 
bill while some one lifted him up by it, as a baby 
is tossed by its arms. He would even hold on and 
let you " swing him around your head." He was 
never daunted, and when the toddling two-year- 
old would get too rough in her play and strike at 
him with her stick, he would either catch the hem 
of her pinafore and hold on till she ran away, or 
would try scaring her, rushing at her — his big 
black wings spread out and his bill wide open. 

One day his pluck was thoroughly tested. 
Hearing loud caws of distress coming from the 
lawn, the gardener rushed across and found Jim 
lying on his back, his claw tightly gripping the 
end of one of the wings of a large hawk, that, 
surprised and terrified by this turn of the tables 
was struggling frantically to get away. Jim held 
him as tight as a vise, and only loosened his grasp 
to give his enemy into the gardener's hands. After 
letting go he submitted to the victor's reward, let- 
ting his wounds be examined and his bravery ex- 
tolled while he was carried about — wearing a 
most consciously heroic air, it must be confessed 
— ■ for due celebration of the victory. 



14 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

III. 

THE BLUEBIRD. 

As you stroll through the meadows on a May 
morning, drinking in the spring air and sunshine, 
and delighting in the color of the dandelions and 
the big bunches of blue violets that dot the grass, 
a bird call comes quavering overhead that seems 
the voice of all country loveliness. Simple, sweet, 
and fresh as the spirit of the meadows, with a 
tinge of forest richness in the plaintive tru-al-ly 
that marks the rhythm of our bluebird's undulat- 
ing flight, wherever the song is heard, from city 
street or bird-box, it must bring pictures of flower- 
ing fields, blue skies, and the freedom of the 
wandering summer winds. 

Look at the bluebird now as he goes over your 
head — note the cinnamon of his breast ; and as 
he flies down and turns quickly to light on the 
fence post, see the cobalt-blue that flashes from 
his back. These colors are the poet's signs that 
the bird's sponsors are the " earth and sky." And 
the little creature has a wavering way of lifting 
its wings when perching, as if hesitating between 
earth and sky, that may well carry out the poet's 
hint of his wild ethereal spirit. 

Notice the bluebird's place in literature. The 
robin, with his cheerful soprano call, serves as the 
emblem of domestic peace and homely cheer ; but 



THE BLUEBIRD. 15 

the bluebird, with his plaintive contralto warble, 
stirs the imagination, and is used as the poetic 
symbol of spring. The temper of the bluebird 
makes him a fit subject for the poet's encomiums. 
Mr. Burroughs goes so far as to say that "the 
expression of his indignation is nearly as musical 
as his song." 

Lowell speaks of the bluebird as 

1 ' shif ting his light load of song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence." 

But although he is as restless and preoccupied 
here as elsewhere, lifting his wings tremulously as 
if in reality " shifting his load of song," and long- 
ing to fly away, the bluebird sometimes comes 
down to the prose of life even here and actually 
hides his nest in the hole of a fence rail. When 
this is not his fancy he fits up an old woodpecker's 
hole in a post, stub, or tree ; or, if more social in 
his habits, builds in knot-holes in the sides of 
barns, or in bird-boxes arranged for his use. At 
Northampton I was shown a nest in an old stub 
by the side of the road, so shallow that the father 
and mother birds fed their young from the out- 
side, clinging to the sides of the hole and reaching 
in to drop the food into the open mouths below. 

Although the bluebird has such a model temper, 
it has not always a clear idea of the laws of meum 
and tuum, as was shown by a nest found directly 
on top of a poor swallow's nest where there lay 
four fresh eggs ! The nest is usually lined with 



16 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

dry grasses and similar materials. The eggs, 
from four to seven in number, are generally plain 
pale greenish blue, but occasionally white. 

Sitting on a fence at a little distance the young 
birds look almost black, but as they fly off you 
catch a tinge of blue on their wings and tails. 
Their mother is more like her husband, but, as 
with most lady birds, her tints are subdued — 
doubtless the result of " adaptation," as bright 
colors on the back of the brooding mother woidd 
attract danger. 

We have two reasons for gratitude to the blue- 
bird. It comes home early in the spring, and is 
among the last to leave in the fall, its sweet note 
trembling on the air when the " bare branches of 
the trees are rattling in the wind." 

IV. 

CHIMNEY SWIFT; CHIMNEY "SWALLOW." 

Watch a chimney swift as he comes near you, 
rowing through the air first with one wing and 
then the other, or else cruising along with sails 
set. Look at him carefully and you will see that 
he is not a swallow, although he often goes by 
that name. He looks much more like a bat. His 
outlines are so clear cut and angular that he could 
be reduced, roughly, to two triangles, their com- 
mon base cutting his body vertically in halves. 



CHIMNEY SWIFT. 17 

His tail is, of itself, an acute-angled triangle ter- 
minating merely in bristles ; and his wings look 
as if made of skin stretched on a frame, bat 
fashion, instead of being of feathers. 

He twitters in a sharp chippering way as he 
flutters' through the air and picks up flies, saying, 
as Mr. Burroughs puts it, " chippy- chippy-chirio, 
not a man in Dario can catch a chippy-chippy- 
chirio." And you are inclined to believe the 
boast — such zigzag darting, such circling and 
running! The men of Dario would need seven 
league wings to keep up with him, and then, after 
a lightning race, when just ready to throw their 
pinch of salt, with a sudden wheel the chippy- 
chirio would dart down a chimney and disappear 
from sight. 

And what a noise these swifts do make in the 
chimneys ! If you ever had a room beside one of 
their lodging-houses you can testify to their " noc- 
turnal habits during the nesting season." Such 
chattering and jabbering, such rushing in and 
scrambling out ! If you only could get your spy- 
glass inside the chimney ! Their curious little 
nests are glued against the sides like tiny wall 
pockets ; and there the swifts roost, or rather 
hang, clinging to the wall, side by side, like little 
sooty bats. Audubon says that before the young 
birds are strong enough to fly they clamber up 
to the mouths of the chimneys as the pitifully tri- 
umphant chimney-sweeps used to come up for a 



18 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

breath and wave their brooms in the air at their 
escape from the dangers below. Though never 
venturing near us the swifts come to live inside 
our houses. Like the robin they are citizens, but 
what a contrast ! 

Their feet are weak from disuse, and it is be- 
lieved that they never light anywhere except in a 
chimney or in a hollow tree, where they sometimes 
go at night and in bad weather. They gather the 
twigs they glue together for their nests while on 
the wing, and their ingenuity in doing it shows 
how averse they are to lighting. Audubon says : 
" The chimney swallows are seen in great numbers 
whirling around the tops of some decayed or dead 
tree, as if in pursuit of their insect prey. Their 
movements at this time are exceedingly rapid; 
they throw their body suddenly against the twig, 
grapple it with their feet, and by an instantaneous 
jerk snap it off short, and proceed with it to the 
place intended for the nest." 

V. 

CATBIRD. 

High trees have an unsocial aspect, and so, as 
Lowell says, "The catbird croons in the lilac- 
bush," in the alders, in a prickly ash copse, a bar- 
berry-bush, or by the side of the garden. In 
Northampton one of his favorite haunts is an old 



CATBIRD. 19 

orchard that slopes down to the edge of Mill 
River. Here he is welcomed every year by his 
college girl friends ; and in the open seclusion of 
an apple-tree proceeds to build his nest and raise 
his little family, singing through it all with keen 
enjoyment of the warm sunshine and his own com- 
pany. 

To the tyro the catbird is at once the most in- 
teresting and most exasperating of birds. Like 
some people, he seems to give up his time to the 
pleasure of hearing himself talk. A first cousin 
of the mocking-bird — whom he resembles in per- 
son much more than in voice — perhaps the re- 
lationship accounts for his overweening confidence 
in his vocal powers. As a matter of fact his jerky 
utterance is so harsh that it has been aptly termed 
asthmatic. 

The catbird is unmistakably a Bohemian. He 
is exquisitely formed, and has a beautiful slate- 
gray coat, set off by his black head and tail. By 
nature he is peculiarly graceful, and when he 
chooses can pass for the most polished of the 
Philistine aristocracy. But he cares nothing for 
all this. With lazy self-indulgence he sits by the 
hour with relaxed muscles, and listlessly drooping 
wings and tail. If he were a man you feel con- 
fident that he would sit in shirt sleeves at home 
and go on the street without a collar. 

And his occupation ? His cousin is an artist, 
but he — is he a wag as well as a caricaturist, or 



20 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

is he in sober earnest when he tries to mimic the 
inimitable Wilson's thrush? If a wag he is a 
success, for he deceives the unguarded into believ- 
ing him a robin, a cat, and — " a bird new to 
science ! " How he must chuckle over the enthu- 
siasm which hails his various notes and the bewil- 
derment and chagrin that come to the diligent 
observer who finally catches a glimpse of the gar- 
rulous mimic ! 

The catbird builds his nest as he does every- 
thing else. The loose mass of coarse twigs patched 
up with pieces of newspaper or anything he hap- 
pens to fancy, looks as if it would hardly bear his 
weight. He lines it, however, with fine bits of 
brown and black roots, and when the beautiful 
dark green eggs are laid in it, you feel sure that 
such an artistic looking bird must enjoy the con- 
trasting colors. 



VI. 



KEEL - TAILED BLACKBIRD ; CROW BLACKBIRD ; 
BRONZED GRACKLE. 

Lowell gives this bird the first place in the 
calendar. He says : — 

11 Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, 
And settlin' thing's in windy Congresses, — 
Queer politicians, though, for I '11 be skinned 
If all on 'em don't head against the wind." 

In spite of all that may be brought up in Grand 



CROW BLACKBIRD, 21 

Jury against these " queer politicians," who is 
there that could not confess to a thrill of pleasure 
when they appear about the house " clatt'rin' in 
tall trees " ? 

As Mr. Burroughs has it : " The air is filled 
with cracking, splintering, spurting, semi-musical 
sounds, which are like pepper and salt to the ear/' 
There is a delicious reality to their notes. We 
feel now that spring is not a myth of the poets, 
after all, but that she has sent this black advance 
guard as a promise of wild flowers and May-day. 

Black, did I say ? Nothing could be more mis- 
leading. Mr. Ridgway describes the body of the 
purple grackle as " brassy olive or bronze," his 
neck as " steel-blue, violet, purple, or brassy 
green," and his wings and tail as " purplish or 
violet-purplish." He is one of the most brilliant 
of our bird beauties. Watch him as he ambles 
over the branches, and when the sunlight strikes 
him you will wonder who could have been so blind 
as to dub him blackbird. Call him, rather, the 
black opal ! 

He is a bird of many accomplishments. To 
begin with, he does not condescend to hop, like 
ordinary birds, but imitates the crow in his stately 
walk ; then he has a steering apparatus that the 
small boy might well study in coasting time. He 
can turn his tail into a rudder. Watch him as 
he flies. While he is going straight ahead you 
do not notice anything unusual, but as soon as he 



22 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

turns or wants to alight you see his tail change 
from the horizontal to the vertical — into a rud- 
der. He is called keel-tailed on account of it. 

Moreover, he can pick beechnuts, catch cray- 
fish without getting nipped, and fish for minnows 
alongside of any ten-year-old. Last October I 
found him beech-nutting, but he made hard work 
of it. I suspect the cold snap — for there was 
snow on the ground — had stiffened his toes so 
that he was more awkward than usual. Poor fel- 
low, I felt sorry for him, it entailed such danger- 
ous gymnastics ! But it was amusing to see him 
walk over the branches, stretch his neck to the 
point of dislocation, and then make such a deter- 
mined dive after the nut that he nearly lost his 
balance, and could only save himself by a desper- 
ate jerk of the tail. Even when he picked out a 
nut he had to put it under his claw and drill 
through the shell, pick-axe style, before he could 
get a morsel to eat. He evidently thought it 
rather serious sport, and flew down for some shriv- 
eled crab-apples as a second course. But an army 
of robins had possession of the apple-tree and 
two of them were detailed to drive him off, so he 
had to finish his breakfast up in the cold beech 
top. 

A long list of nesting sites might be given, in- 
cluding martin-houses, poplars, evergreens, holes 
in stubs, the sides of fish hawk's nests, and 
church spires where the blackbirds' "clatt'rin"' is 



CROW BLACKBIRD. 23 

drowned by the tolling bells. Instances of their 
quarrels with robins and other birds would fill a 
volume, but the most interesting feud of which 
I have heard was enacted in the garden of the 
keen observer and botanist, Mrs. Helen M. Bagg, 
and its progress was watched by her unnoticed, 
as she looked out upon the participants from 
among the flowering shrubs and vines that sur- 
round her cottage. I quote her racy descrip- 
tion : — 

" Early one May two robins, with many mani- 
festations of happiness, set up house-keeping in a 
tree near the south end of my house. A few days 
later a large flock of blackbirds alighted on the 
trees on the north side of the yard. There had 
been a blackbird wedding, and their friends had 
escorted them hither with the laudable intention 
of finding a suitable location for a nest for the 
happy pair. A loud chattering and fluttering fol- 
lowed, one advising this place, another that. At 
length the young husband espied the broad top 
of the water-pipe, under the eaves, and settled on 
that as a most secure and suitable home for his 
bride. The wedding guests, with the satisfaction 
that comes from the consciousness of having per- 
formed one's duty, took their departure, leaving 
the blissful couple to the uninterrupted enjoyment 
of their own society. Ah ! who could have fore- 
told ; on night so fair, such awful morn ? could 
rise ? " 



24 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

" In the mean time the robins had been watch- 
ing these unusual proceedings with much anxiety 
and uneasiness ; apparently not well pleased and 
not a little alarmed that their hereditary foes 
should presume to invade their domains and be- 
come domiciled in such close proximity to their 
own residence. But they made no hostile demon- 
strations that day, waiting to see the turn of af- 
fairs, and, as the sequel shows, to gain time to 
summon the assistance of friends. Early the next 
morning they resolved to eject the new-comers 
from the premises. 

" Then occurred the most remarkable scene I 
ever witnessed. At the loud cries of the combat- 
ants an immense number of birds of both kinds 
came flocking from all quarters to the scene of 
action, as if they had been expecting the affray. 
They attacked each other with great ferocity and 
fought pluckily with bills and feet amid loud 
cries of anger and derision, Feathers flew. The 
wounded would fly away to a neighboring tree to 
nurse their hurts for a moment, when, still smart- 
ing with pain, back they would come to fight with 
redoubled fury. The shrieks and cries increased 
till it seemed a veritable pandemonium. Every 
robin and blackbird within the radius of a mile 
must have been present, either as spectator or par- 
ticipant in the strife. After a time, finding that 
both parties were equally brave, and that neither 
would yield, they with one accord withdrew from 



CROW BLACKBIRD. 25 

the conflict as suddenly as they came, a few only 
remaining to arbitrate matters. 

" The path from the house to the road divides 
the yard into equal parts. It was agreed that in 
future the blackbirds should keep on the north 
side, and the robins on the south side of this path. 
Peace and quiet reigned the rest of the day, all 
parties being too exhausted to resume the struggle 
even if they had not been in honor bound to re- 
spect the treaty. But do not fancy that the feud 
was forgotten. By no means. The sleek black- 
coated, dapper young gentleman, conscious of hav- 
ing won the victory, inasmuch as he had not been 
dislodged from his position, allowed no oppor- 
tunity to pass in which he might show his con- 
tempt for or exult over his plainly-dressed and 
comparatively inelegant neighbors. 

" When the nest-building commenced, our gay 
chevalier complacently permitted his meek little 
wife to perform the main part of the labor, while 
he would perch himself on a limb as near the di- 
viding line as possible and taunt or ridicule his 
opponents, whom family cares alone prevented 
from reciprocating the compliments — the will 
and desire were strong enough. Sometimes he 
would examine the nest to see how the work pro- 
gressed, and occasionally he condescended to pick 
up a straw and fly with it to a tree near by, and 
sit there with it in his mouth with a wonderfully 
self-satisfied air, yet never offering it to his mate. 



26 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

After a few moments he would drop it, smooth 
his plumage, wheel about, whisk his tail, and per- 
form various other antics for the delectation of 
Mrs. Blackbird ; then he would suddenly dart off 
to see what the robins were about. 




" During the weeks that followed, through nest- 
making and incubation, the enmity between the 
blackbirds and robins never abated. They were 
ever wary and on the alert, and if it chanced that 
either party, returning to his home, happened to 
cross the 4 Mason and Dixon's line,' the other was 
out of his nest in a trice to drive off the intruder. 
Sometimes I thought both parties courted these 
occasions, though they would generally content 



BOBOLINK. 27 

themselves with, angry words and looks. The next 
year they, or their children, returned, and each 
took amicable possession of his old nesting-place, 
neither deigning to notice his neighbor." 



VII. 

bobolink; reed-bird; rice-bird. 

Though the bluebird brings the poet pictures 
of fields blooming with dandelions and blue vio- 
lets, and visions of all the freshness and beauty of 
nature, it tinges his thought with the tremulous 
sadness and longing of spring ; but Robert o' Lin- 
coln, the light-hearted laugher of June, brings 
him the spirit of the long bright days when the 
sun streams full upon meadows glistening with 
buttercups and daisies. 

Pray, have you seen the merry minstrel singing 
over the fields, or sitting atilt of a grass stem? 
And do you know what an odd dress he masquer- 
ades in ? If not, let me warn you. One day at 
college some young observers came to me in great 
excitement. They had seen a new bird. It was 
a marvelous, unheard-of creature — its back was 
white and its breast black. What could it be? 
Later on, when we were out one day, a bobolink 
flew on to the campus. That was their bird. And 
to justify their description they exclaimed, " He 
looks as if his clothes were turned around." And 
so he does. 



28 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Shades of short hair and bloomers, what an in- 
novation ! How the birds must gossip ! Instead 
of the light-colored shirt and vest and decorous 
dark coat sanctioned by the Worth of conven- 




tional bird circles for centuries, this radical decks 
himself out in a jet-black shirt and vest, with not 
so much as a white collar to redeem him ; besides 
having all of four almost white patches on the 
back of his coat! But don't berate him — who 
knows but this unique coloring is due to a process 
unrecognized by the Parisian Worth, but desig- 
nated by Mr. Darwin as " adaptation " ? Most 
field birds are protected by sparrowy backs, and 
with his black back, the tendency certainly seems 
to be to lessen the striking effect with lighter col- 
ors, leaving the breast, which is unseen when he 



BOBOLINK. 29 

is on the grass, as black as may be. In the fall 
when flying into dangers that necessitate an in- 
conspicuous suit, the bobolink makes amends for 
the confusion caused in the spring, by adopting 
the uniform ochraceous tints of his wife. In this 
dress' he joins large companies of his brothers and 
flies south, where he is known first as the " reed- 
bird,^' and then, in the rice-fields, as the "rice- 
bird." 

What could resemble the old time " needle in 
the hay-stack " more than a bobolink's nest in a 
meadow full of high grass ? But, do you say, the 
birds act as a magnet to discover it ? That seems 
to remove all difficulties. But suppose your mag- 
net were bound to make you believe north, south, 
and east, west ? When the bobolinks assure you 
their nest is — anywhere except where it is — 
within a radius of five or six rods, you — well, try 
it some warm day next summer ! Here is a bit of 
my experience. 

One day in June I think I have surely found a 
bobolink's nest. Everything is simplified. In- 
stead of a dozen pairs of birds flying up helter 
skelter from all parts of the field, there is only 
one pair, and they kindly give me a line across 
the meadow ending with a small elm on the west, 
and a fence on the east. As they only occasion- 
ally diverge to an evergreen on the north or go 
for a run to a distant field on the south, I am 
confident. In imagination I am already examin- 



30 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

ing the brownish white, deeply speckled eggs and 
noting the details of the nest. But the best way 
is to keep perfectly still and let the birds show 
me just where the nest is, though of course it is 
only a matter of a few minutes more or less. I sit 
down in the grass, pull the timothy stems over my 
dress, make myself look as much as possible like 
a meadow, and keep one eye on the bobolinks, 
while appearing to be absorbed with an object on 
the other side. But they are better actors than I. 

Twitter-itter-itter the anxious mother reiterates 
in a high key as she hovers suggestively over a 
tuft of grass a few rods away. So soon ! My 
impatience can hardly be restrained. But — the 
father is coming. 

Lingkum - lingkum - lingkum, he vociferates 
loudly, hovering over a bunch of weeds in just 
the opposite direction. By this time the mother 
is atilt of another timothy stem in a new place, 
looking as if just ready to fly down to her nest. 
And so they keep it up, I examine all the weeds 
and tussocks of grass they point out. On nearing 
one of them, the mother flies about my head with 
a show of the greatest alarm ; my hopes reach 
certainty — there is nothing there ! I look under 
every nodding buttercup and spreading daisy for 
yards around only to see Mrs. Robert of Lincoln 
hovering above a spot she had avoided before. 
The next day I offer a reward to two children if 
they will find the nest, but the birds probably 



BOBOLINK. 31 

practice the same wiles on them — they can dis- 
cover nothing. What a pity the poor birds can't 
tell friends from enemies. They treat me as if I 
were a brigand ; but if they knew I wanted to 
peep at their pretty eggs and admire their house- 
keeping arrangements, how gladly they would show 
me about ! 

After noticing the clear cut, direct flight of the 
robin, the undulating flight of the bluebird, and 
the circling and zigzagging of the swift, you will 
study with interest the labored sallies and eccen- 
tricities of the bobolink. When he soars, he 
turns his wings down till he looks like an open 
umbrella ; and when getting ready to light in the 
grass puts them up sail fashion, so that the um- 
brella seems to be turned inside out. Indeed, 
from the skillful way he uses his wings and tail 
to steer and balance himself, you might think he 
had been trained for an acrobat. 

The most animated song of the bobolink is 
given on the wing, although he sings constantly 
in the grass, and on low trees and bushes. The 
most exuberantly happy of all our birds, he seems 
to contain the essence of summer joy and sun- 
shine. " Bobolinhum-linkiun-deah-deah-deah " he 
warbles away, the notes fairly tumbling over each 
other as they pour out of his throat. Up from 
the midst of the buttercups and daisies he starts 
and flies along a little way, singing this joyous 
song with such light - hearted fervor that he is 



32 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

glad to sink down on the stem of some sturdy 
young timothy before giving his last burst of 
song. 

Thoreau gives the best description I have ever 
seen of the first notes of the bobolink's song. He 
says : "I hear the note of a bobolink concealed 
in the top of an apple-tree behind me. . . . He is 
just touching the strings of his theorbo, his glassi- 
chord, his water organ, and one or two notes globe 
themselves and fall in liquid bubbles from his 
tuning throat. It is as if he touched his harp 
within a vase of liquid melody, and when he lifted 
it out the notes fell like bubbles from the trem- 
bling strings. Methinks they are the most liquidly 
sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard." 

Almost every one gives a different rendering of 
the bobolink's meaning. The little German chil- 
dren playing in our meadows cry after him in 
merry mimicry, " Oncle-dey dunkel-dey oncle-dey 
dunkel-dey." The farm boy calls him the " corn- 
planting bird," and thinks he says, " Dig a hole, 
dig a hole, put it in, put it in, cover H up, cover H 
up, stamp on H, stamp on 't, step along" 

VIII. 

RUFFED GROUSE; PARTRIDGE. 

The partridge, or ruffed grouse as he is more 
properly called, is our first true woods bird. His 



RUFFED GROUSE. 33 

colors are the colors of the brown leaves that lie 
on the ground, and as he crouches close to the 
earth it is no easy task to discover him. The one 
thought of the poor persecuted bird seems to be 
to keep out of reach of his enemies. 

Here', one of his favorite covers is in a quiet 
spot where I go to gather ferns — a grove that 
" fronts the rising sun " and is full of dappled 
maple saplings interspersed with the white birches 
that gleam in the morning light and keep birch- 
bark scrolls rolled up along their sides ready for 
the birds to carry away for their nests. At the 
foot of the trees, and close to the moss-covered 
drumming-log, ferns stand in pretty groups of all 
growths from the tiny green sprays and the soft 
uncurling downy balls to the full grown arching 
fronds whose backs are dotted with brown fruit ; 
while, as a protecting hedge along the front of the 
grove, great masses of the tender green mountain 
fern give their delicate fragrance to the air. But 
pass by this hiding place, and a sudden ivhirr 
through the bushes, first from one startled bird 
and then another, tells you they have flown before 
you. Approach the drumming-log when the air 
has been resounding with exultant blows — the 
noise stops, not a bird is to be seen. 

As we feed the partridges in our woods and 
never allow any hunting there, in winter the birds 
venture about the house for food. The Norway 
spruces by the garden afford a warm shelter, and 



34 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

there, under the boughs, corn is kept for them 
on barrels and boxes. On the other side of the 
house, in front of the dining-room window, is a 
similar store for the blue jays and gray squirrels ; 
and as they sometimes visit the partridges' table, 
the latter often fly around the house to see if the 
squirrels' corn tastes any better than theirs. 

The first snowy morning they appear we have 
to peek through the shutters very cautiously, for 
they are painfully shy, crouching in the snow, lis- 
tening tremulously to the least sound from the 
house, looking about every time they pick up a 
kernel of corn, and whirring off back to their 
evergreens if a window or blind chances to be 
thrown open. But they soon lose their fears, and 
some mornings we find their pretty footprints in 
the snow on the piazza. 

One winter they seemed to show a fondness for 
music, often coming close to the house as I was 
playing the piano. Indeed they and the squirrels 
must both have followed the Pied Piper of Hame- 
lin — the squirrels not only nibble their corn with 
complacent satisfaction when the music box is 
wound for them, but have even let themselves be 
stroked when a peculiarly pathetic air was whis- 
tled! Who dare say what forest concerts the 
pretty creatures may get up on the long winter 
evenings when they are tired frolicking on the 
moonlit snow! 

Still the partridges seem to like the bright red 



RUFFED GROUSE. 35 

berries of the cranberry-tree even better than they 
do music, and we have been much amused watch- 
ing their attempts to get the berries from a bush 
by the garden. Sometimes they stand in the snow 
underneath and jump for them ; but one day when 
the bush was covered with ice one adventurous 
bird flew up on a branch and nearly turned a 
somersault in trying to lean over and pick off the 
berries and at the same time keep hold of the 
slippery perch. 

But our chief pleasure is in watching the par- 
tridges from the bay window of the dining-room. 
The young men are as proud as turkey-cocks 
of the handsome black ruffs for which they were 
dubbed " ruffed grouse," and when they strut be- 
fore the ladies, raising their crests, erecting their 
spread tails, and puffing out the ruffs over their 
shoulders they remind one forcibly of the lordly 
cock. In matter of fact they do belong to the 
same family, — that of the gallinaceous birds, — 
and many of their mannerisms betray the relation- 
ship. Their way of scratching in the snow, rest- 
ing their weight on one foot and scratching with 
the other, is like that of the common hen, and 
their drumming is the finished performance that 
is caricatured by Chanticleer. Drumming with 
the partridge is a joy. He beats the air with his 
wings till it must needs sing for him, and the 
music is full of refreshing pictures of green mossy 
logs, arching ferns, and the cool shade of the 
woods. 



36 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

IX. 

RUBY-THROATED HUMMING-BIRD. 

Did you ever see a humming-bird sitting on a 
bare branch of a towering tree ? Until you have 
you will scarcely appreciate what a wee mite of a 
bird it is. Indeed I find it hard to think of it 
as a bird at all. It seems more like a fairy, " a 
glittering fragment of a rainbow," as Audubon 
calls it, or as some one else has said, — 

u Like a gem or a blossom on pinions," 

something too dainty and airy to have even three 
inches of actual length. It seems like the winged 
spirit of color as it comes humming through the 
air to hover over the flowers on the piazza, its 
body like green beryl, and its throat glancing fire. 
Like Puck it might boast that it could " put a 
girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," 
for while we are wondering at its friendliness it 
darts off and is gone like the flash of a diamond. 

In this vicinity the garden of Mrs. Bagg seems 
to be one of the favorite haunts of the humming- 
birds, and she has kindly given me some notes on 
her experiences with them. She says : — 

" In confinement they do not appear to pine for 
freedom, beating themselves against the wires like 
other birds, but seem contented and at home from 
the first* I kept a pair caged a whole summer, 



HUMMING-BIRD. • 37 

feeding thein with water sweetened with honey or 
sugar. When I put a cup of their food in the 
cage they would alight on my fingers, and with 
their long flexible tongue suck off the honey I had 
accidentally spilled. In disposition they are too 
pugnacious to live as harmoniously as one would 
expect or desire, sometimes pursuing one another 
around the cage with great ferocity, and such in- 
conceivable rapidity that their tiny forms seemed 
resolved into absolute sound. I frequently per- 
mitted them to fly about the room for exercise, 
but they never returned voluntarily to their cage. 
When caught they did not resist and struggle, 
but saw the door of their prison-house closed upon 
them without a complaint. They had never a sick 
or unhappy day through the whole summer, but 
when the cold days of autumn approached they 
began to droop, although their cage was hung in 
the warmest place in the room. For three days 
they hung suspended to their perches by their 
feet, and did not relax the hold while life lasted. 
I have found them clinging to vines and shrub- 
bery in that manner on cold mornings after a 
frost, but though seemingly lifeless the warmth of 
the hand would revive them. 

" Some years a few are unaccountably tardy 
about migrating; at other times they make the 
mistake of coming too early in spring. Undoubt- 
edly most of them migrate in August, but with 
them, as in every other community, there are aL 



38 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

ways some laggards as well as bold pioneers. I 
once found one in my house on a very cold morn- 
ing in the fall. He was probably sleeping on some 
house-plants that had been brought in from the 
frost the previous night, and was too benumbed 
with cold to know it. I caught and fed him, as it 
would have been barbarous to turn him out in the 
cold. He soon became a great pet, and was tame 
as a kitten. 

" One day two gentlemen entered the room 
where his cage was hanging, both wearing tall 
hats. He fell immediately to the bottom of the 
cage, with wings outspread, eyes closed, body rigid, 
and with every appearance of death. We took 
him in our hands and warmed him by the fire. 
He still remained motionless. We decided that 
those hats had frightened him to death. With a 
heavy heart I laid him aside, intending to embalm 
him at my leisure. 

" A few minutes later my friends left the house. 
Directly after the door closed I heard a humming 
and buzzing in the room. Looking up, there was 
my bird circling around the room in the most hila- 
rious manner. Who can tell whether his apparent 
death was not counterfeited ? If it was not feigned, 
why did he revive the moment the door was closed 
and I was alone ? 

" If you capture one out of doors and hold 
him in your hand he will practice the same 
ruse, stretching himself out, stiff and motionless. 



HUMMING-BIRD. 39 

Thrown off your guard you stoop to examine your 
prize, when lo ! your hand is empty and your 
bird nearly out of sight before you have time to 
recover from the astonishment. 

"Towards the humble-bee he manifests the 
utmost ill-will, a veritable ' dog in the manger ' 
spirit, driving him away from one flower after an- 
other till the bee in pure desperation turns on his 
persecutor. There are surely sweets enough for 
all, and he knows it. Still it may be possible that 
his animosity is aroused more by a personal aver- 
sion he has to the bee than by more selfish con- 
siderations. We will give him the benefit of the 
doubt. He is fond of silence, and will often sit 
half an hour together on a dead twig wrapt in 
the profoundest meditation, and doubtless the in- 
cessant droning of the bees disturbs his reflections 
and irritates him beyond endurance. I had once 
in my garden a ribbon-bed of white and rose col- 
ored Lamium. In its unsullied beauty it was like 
a dream of poetry. Every flower was perfect 
with an unsurpassed and delicate loveliness. One 
sunny morning I observed an unusual number of 
humming-birds and bees working among the blos- 
soms. Presently there was a commotion ! The 
humming-birds had united to drive the bees away, 
darting at them furiously, uttering at the same 
time their spiteful, piping cries. The bees, intent 
on seeking their breakfast, at first gave up good- 
naturedly and flew to some other flower, only to 



40 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

be driven from that a moment later. At length 
forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and the temper 
of the apathetic bee was aroused. A fierce battle 
ensued. They pursued one another around and 
around that flower bed, over and under and 
through the flowers, sometimes the birds and then 
the bees having the vantage. Their rage knew no 
bounds, and they fought till sheer exhaustion com- 
pelled them to desist. Every flower was torn to 
shreds, not a whole blossom remaining." 

The nest of the humming-bird is as delicate as 
the little creature itself. It is built in the form 
of a small cup, saddled upon a horizontal limb, 
and covered on the outside with lichens which 
make it look like a knob on the branch. The 
child who discovers a humming-bird's nest is cred- 
ited with sharp eyes. 

X. 

MEADOWVLARK. 

To many, the meadow-lark is only a voice, but 
if you follow the rule laid down at the beginning 
of your work, and are determined to see as well 
as hear, you will have little trouble in finding the 
owner of the plaintive call that rises so mysteri- 
ously out of the grass. 

Focus your glass on the meadow, and listen 
carefully for the direction of the sound. As the 



MEADOW-LARK. 



41 



lark is very much the color of the dead grass that 
covers the ground when he first conies north, and 
of the dry stubble left after the summer mowing, 
he is somewhat hard to see. When you have 
found him, it is a delightful surprise to see that 




the brownish yellow disguise of his back is re- 
lieved, not, indeed, by a sable robe like the bobo- 
link's, but by a throat of brilliant yellow, set off 
by a large black crescent. 

The meadow-lark has two notable characteris- 
tics. Belonging to the blackbird family, he is a 
walker, and when he flies you will see that he is 
also one of the few birds marked by prominent 
white outer tail feathers. The peculiarities of his 
labored flight are exactly described by Shelley 



42 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

when he says, in his Ode to the Skylark, " Thou 
dost float and run" Flying seems hard work for 
him, and he does as little of it as possible. When 
he starts up from the meadow, he goes in a di- 
rect line to the tree he wishes to reach. Like 
the bobolink, he nests in fields and lays his eggs 
in a coil of dried grass on the ground. 

In variety and execution the famous song of the 
European lark may be superior to that of our own 
Eastern lark, though Wilson holds that ours ex- 
cels it in " sweetness of voice." The mournful 
melody of the meadow-lark is full of poetic sugges- 
tions ; he is the hermit thrush of the meadows, 
and where the light-hearted bobolink's song jos- 
tles the sunbeams, he is as solitary and pensive as 
the lonely hermit when it thrills the hush of the 
sunset after-glow with its fervid Te Deum. 

XL 

BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE; TITMOUSE. 

Read Emerson's " Titmouse " and you will 
recognize this charming little bird without the 
aid of your glass. Not only in spring and fall, 
but in the coldest winter days you will hear what 
Thoreau calls the " silver tinkling " chick-a-dee- 
dee-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee ringing through 
the air. When you hear it, if you look carefully 
over the trees you will see a fluffy little bodj 



CHICKADEE. 43 

dressed out in a black hood whose sombre tone is 
relieved by whitish side pieces, a vest to match 
the sides of the hood, and a dark gray coat for 
contrast. Clinging to the side of a tree one min- 
ute, and hanging upside down pecking at the 
moss on a branch the next, it is flitting about 
hither and thither so busily that unless you draw 
near you will hardly catch a glimpse of its black 
cap and gray and white clothes. You need not 
fear scaring it, for it has the most winning confi- 
dence in man, inspecting the trees in the front 
yard or those in the woods with the same trustful 
unconcern. 

You are inclined to think that the busy chick- 
adee takes no time to meditate, and sees only the 
bright side of life ; and when you hear its plain- 
tive minor whistle piercing the woods, you wonder 
if it can have come from the same little creature 
whose merry chick-a-dee-dee you know so well. 
Thoreau calls this plaintive whistle the spring 
phoebe's note of the chickadee, and gives its win- 
ter call as day, day, day. When happy, the 
chickadee is the best company one could hope for 
on a winter's walk; when busy it seems to realize 
perpetual motion ; and when it gives up its ordi- 
nary pursuits and prepares to rear a family, it 
goes to work in the same whole-souled fashion. 
Leaving civilization with its many distractions, it 
goes into the woods, and that is the last you see 
or hear of it until fall. Even there it is not con- 



44 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

tent to sit perched up on top of an open nest, but 
builds in the side of a stump or a dead stub, and 
retires from the world with the determination of 
a nun. 

You will wonder at first how such a tiny bill as 
the chickadee's can be used as a pickaxe, but if 
you notice it carefully you will see that, without 
being clumsy, it is very stout, for it is arched 
enough to give it strength. Of course the chick- 
adee sometimes nests in natural cavities in trees ; 
and Audubon says old woodpeckers' holes are oc- 
casionally used ; but most writers agree in think- 
ing that it usually makes its own excavation, 
occasionally in comparatively hard wood. 

One morning I was hurrying noisily through 
the underbrush of a clearing to get home in time 
for breakfast, when, suddenly, I came face to face 
with a pair of chickadees. Even then they did 
not stir, but sat eying me calmly for several sec- 
onds. I suspected a nest, and when they had 
flown off, I discovered the opening in a decayed 
stub close by my side. The stub was a small one, 
being perhaps eight or ten inches in diameter and 
four and a half feet high. The entrance was 
about a foot from the top, and the nest itself a 
foot or more below this. What a tasteful little 
structure it was ! Although out of sight, it was 
far prettier than most bird-houses on exhibition 
in the forest. Bits of fresh green moss gave it a 
dainty air, and brought out the dark gray of the 



CHICKADEE. 45 

squirrel or rabbit fur that made it snug and 
warm. I was tempted to wonder where the fur 
came from — had this innocent chickadee tweaked 
it out of the back of some preoccupied animal ? 
Perhaps the demure little recluse has a spice of 
wickedness after all, and its satisfaction in its se- 
cure retreat has something of exultant mischief 
in it ! 

In any case, it sometimes takes unfair advan- 
tage, for this fall I saw a chickadee deliberately- 
lying in wait for his breakfast, just as a spider 
would. I was passing a Norway spruce when I 
caught sight of him pecking away on the under 
side of one of the lower branches. Soon he pulled 
out a large white chrysalis-like ball, flew up on a 
branch and sat there till he disposed of it. Then 
he went back and hung himself, upside down, to 
the branch, just below the place where the first 
morsel had come from. Balder, my big New- 
foundland, and I were within five feet of the little 
rogue, but he did not care for that. There he 
clung for as much as two or three minutes, per- 
fectly motionless except when he turned his head 
to give us a preoccupied look. Then suddenly he 
picked down and drew out a small white worm, 
and flew up into the branch with a triumphant 
little cry, as much as to say, " Ha, ha, I got you 
after all!" 



46 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XII. 

CUCKOO ; RAIN CROW. 

Unless you follow the cuckoo to his haunts, 
you rarely see him. Now and then, perhaps, you 
catch a glimpse of his long brown body as he 
comes silently out of an orchard, an overgrown 
garden, or a clump of bushes, to disappear swiftly 
in a heavily leaved tree or mass of shrubbery 
where he suspects a fresh supply of insects, 

A third longer than the robin, the cuckoo is a 
slender, olive-brown bird with a light breast. The 
two species are very similar in appearance and 




habit, but in the yellow-billed there are distinct 
white spots known as " thumb marks " on the 



cuckoo. 47 

under side of the tail. The black-billed cuckoo is 
a plainer bird, its only striking peculiarity being 
its bright red eyelids. 

You will do well to remember the rhythm of 
the cuckoo's notes. It may save you an experi- 
ence I had one fall. I supposed the birds had 
left for the South, but hearing a regular kuk-kuk- 
huk coming from the woods, and being especially 
anxious to study the cuckoo's habits, I left the 
raspberry patch where I was watching for rare 
warblers, and hurried off in search of the wander- 
ing voice. What a treat ! — to be able to see a 
cuckoo after all ! I crept along with scrupulous 
care, begrudging the time my caution cost me, but 
determined not to lose this last chance. What if 
he should fly off before I could get there ! But 
no — I began to exult — huh-huh-huh came loud 
and clear as I stopped to listen for the direction 
of the sound. I must be almost up to him. Oh, 
that I could sweep all the noisy dead leaves into 
the ditch ! I look about anxiously for moss and 
old logs to step on. There ! Grasping my note- 
book in one hand, with the other I raise my glass. 
A mischievous looking chipmunk, sitting erect on 
top of a mossy stump, suddenly jumps off into 
the leaves and — the sound stops ! 



48 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XIII. 

YELLOW HAMMER ; FLICKER. 

When people attempt to give their children 
descriptive names they generally meet with the 
success of the colored woman who christened her 
little girl " Lillie White " only to see her grow 
to be the darkest of her ebony family. But local 
bird names are more like nicknames ; they usually 
touch facts, not hopes, and hint the most striking 
features of coloring, song, flight, and habit. As 
you have discovered, this is true of the bluebird, 
chimney swift, catbird, keel-tailed blackbird, hum- 
ming-bird, and meadow -lark; and looking over 
the yellow hammer's thirty-six common names 
given by Mr. Colburn in the Audubon Magazine 
for June, 1887, you will get a fair description of 
the bird. As he flies over your head in the field 
your first impression is of a large yellow bird — 
he is of the size of the crow blackbird — and 
on the list you find " yellow hammer," " yellow 
jay," and " pique-bois jaune " ; but as the yellow 
light comes mainly from his bright yellow shafts 
and the gold of the underside of his wings 
and tail, you have also " yellow-shafted wood- 
pecker," and " golden-winged woodpecker." His 
dark back and the large white spot at the base of 
his tail, though conspicuous in flight, are not dig- 
nified by a name ; but when he lights on the side 



YELLOW HAMMER. 49 

of a tree or an old stub you recognize him as a 
" woodpecker." With the help of your glass you 
also see the bright red crescent on the back of his 
head, for which he is probably called " crescent 
bird." There he clings, fastening his claws firmly 
in the bark, and bracing himself with the stiff 
quills of his tail, so that his convexity of outline 
almost amounts to a half circle as he bends for- 
ward to " hammer " on the wood. This is the 
best time to use your glass, for he is quite a shy 
bird, and except when engaged in his favorite 
work, is hard to observe satisfactorily, even at a 
respectful distance. His dark back proves to be 
barred with black, and following him as he circles 
up the tree you get a glimpse of his breast that 
discloses a large black collar separating his thickly 
spotted breast from the plain light throat. 

The song of the yellow hammer is like the Ger- 
man ih — he has n't any. He has a variety of cries 
and calls, however, and a trill that sounds like a 
great rattle shaken in the air. Mr. Colburn at- 
tributes twelve of his names to imitations of these 
various sounds ; clape, cave-due, fiddler, flicker, 
hittock, hick-wall, ome-tuc, piute or peerit, wake- 
up, yaffle, yarrup, and yucker. 

Mr. Ingersoll refers "flicker " to his flight, and 
if you watch your yellow hammer till he flies off 
to another tree you will see that the adjective de- 
scribes his peculiar but characteristic woodpecker 
flight better than the most labored description. 



50 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Mr. Colburn says he is called " taping bird " from 
it, because lie looks as if " measuring off tape." 

If you are persevering enough to follow him to 
his nest — and you never feel thoroughly ac- 
quainted with birds any more than with people 




until you see them in their homes — you will dis- 
cover why he is called " high-hold," " high-holder," 
and " high-hole " — that is, if the nest he has 
made is one of the high ones. Sometimes yellow 
hammers build very low. However this may be, 
the entrance to the nest is a large round hole, cut 
out of the wood of the tree, as the pile of chips 
on the ground attests. Inside, the hole is very 



YELLOW HAMMER. 51 

deep and the white eggs are laid on the chips at 
the bottom. The usual number of eggs is six. 

A gentleman tells me a curious case of miscal- 
culation on the part of a yellow hammer that built 
in an old apple-tree near his house. He says the 
old birds kept bringing food to the nest so long 
that he thought something must be wrong, and 
went to investigate. The nest was just within his 
reach, and he found that, as he had supposed, the 
birds were more than large enough to fly. In fact 
they were so large they could not get out of the 
mouth of the nest, and were actually imprisoned 
there ! The gentleman got an axe and cut out 
the opening for them, and the next morning the 
brood had flown. 

Knowing the habits of the yellow hammer, you 
wonder why there is no name to credit him with 
the work he does for us in eating the boring ants 
that eviscerate our noblest trees ; and you are still 
more surprised to find no name to stamp him a 
field and ground woodpecker, because his devo- 
tion to ant-hills and other ground preserves is one 
of the characteristics that distinguish him from 
the other woodpeckers. Possibly the name " wood- 
pecker lark " may refer to his custom of hunting 
in the fields. 



52 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XIV. 

BALTIMORE ORIOLE ; FIRE-BIRD ; GOLDEN ROBIN ; 
HANG-NEST. 

Wilson notices the interesting fact that our 
oriole was named by Linnaeus in honor of Lord 
Baltimore, whose colors were black and orange. 

He is shorter than the robin, and compared 
with that plump alderman is slenderly and deli- 
cately built — much more in the form of the 
blackbirds. His back is black instead of grayish- 
brown, and his breast orange instead of dull red- 
dish. In habit, he contrasts still more strongly 
with the robin. Who ever saw Sir Baltimore 
watching for fish-worms in the grass, or taking 
possession of a crotch in the piazza ? — and, on 
the other hand, who ever saw a robin hold his din- 
ner under his claw and peck it to pieces as the 
orioles and their cousins the blackbirds do ? The 
oriole is comparatively shy, and has a nervous, 
excitable temperament, while the robin is not only 
social but phlegmatic. Then the call of the fire- 
bird is shriller, and pitched on a higher key; 
while his love song is an elaborate poem in mel- 
ody, compared with the blunt courtship of robin 
redbreast — just watch this graceful suitor some 
morning as he bows and scrapes before his lady- 
love to the rhythm of his exquisitely modulated 
song. Now running high and loud with joyful 



BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 53 

exultant love, then curving into a low, soft ca- 
dence, vibrating with caressing tenderness, it 
finally rounds off with broken notes of entreaty so 
full of courtly devotion and submission, yet, withal, 
so musical and earnest with tender love, that you 
feel sure his suit can never be denied. 

When the oriole comes to build his nest and 
you compare his work with that of the robin, you 
feel that you have an artistic Queen Anne beside 
a rude mud hovel. The term hang-nest is strictly 
applicable. The birds are skillful weavers and 
build long, delicate, pocket-shaped nests that look 
as if made of gray moss. These they hang from 
the end of a branch, as if thinking of the first 
line of the old nursery rhyme, — 

" When the wind blows the cradle will rock, 
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, ' ' — 

and, indeed, the cradles are built by such clever 
workmen that the bough must needs break to give 
them a fall. The nest looks as if it barely touched 
the twigs from which it hangs, but when you ex- 
amine it you may find that the gray fibres have 
woven the wood in so securely that the nest would 
have to be torn in pieces before it could be loos- 
ened from the twigs. What is the nest made of ? 
It shines as if woven with threads of gray silk, 
but it must be field silk from the stems of plants. 
And the horse hairs ? Mr. Burroughs tells of one 
oriole who went bravely into the back part of a 
horse stable for its hair lining. Sometimes a bit 



54 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

of twine or gay worsted thrown on the grass is 
gladly accepted, and Nuttall once saw an oriole 
carry off a piece of lampwick ten or twelve feet 
long. 

In Northampton I witnessed an interesting case 
which proved that skill in nest making as well 
as other crafts comes by hard-earned experience, 
and, consequently, that manual training should 
be introduced into all bird schools ! A pair of 
young and inexperienced orioles fell in love and 
set out, with the assurance of most brides and 
grooms, to build a home for themselves. They suc- 
ceeded admirably in the selection of their build- 
ing site, but then the trouble began. The premise 
that all young lovers are weavers or architects 
sometimes leads to dire syllogistic conclusions. 
Was it the pressing business of the honeymoon 
that interfered with the weaving, or was it be- 
cause this young couple had not yet learned how 
to pull together that their threads got in a snarl 
and their gray pocket was all awry ? Whatever 
the reason, the cradle was altogether too short to 
rock well, and was skewed up in such a fashion 
that some of the baby birds would have been sure 
of a smothering. Like Grimm's clever Elsie the 
birds foresaw all these dangers, and actually left 
the completed nest to be tossed by the wind while 
they went off to try again in another place. It 
is believed to be unusual for two young birds to 
pair together. 



BARN SWALLOW. 55 

XV. 

BARN SWALLOW. 

The barn swallow is the handsomest and best 
known of the swallows. It is lustrous steel blue 
above, and has a partial collar of the same be- 
tween* the deep chocolate of the chin and throat 
and the pale chestnut of the breast. 

What a contrast to the ugly so-called " chimney 
swallow " ! And not in coloring only. Compare 
its long forked tail with the short, square, bristly 
tail of the swift. And then watch its flight — 
the coursing of a Pegasus beside the trotting of a 
racer ! The swift has wonderful wing power, but 
no grace. It flies as if under wager, and when 
hunting, its path might be marked off by angles, 
for it zigzags like a bat. But the barn swallow's 
course is all curves. It has the freest flight of 
any bird I have ever seen. It seems absolutely 
without effort or constraint. 

The swallows are so agile they often dart down 
as you drive along the road, and circle around 
and around you, managing dexterously to keep 
just ahead of the horses. At other times they 
run and circle away over the fields and through 
the sky, and at sunset often haunt our rivers or 
lakes, skimming low over the surface and some- 
times dipping down for a drink as they go. 

At rest, they sit side by side on the ridge-pole 



56 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

of a barn or on a telegraph wire, where they look 
like rows of little mutes. It is funny enough to 
see them light on a wire. Fluttering over it for 
a moment before settling down, they sway back 
and forth till you are sure they must fall off. 




The roads afford them much occupation. When 
not making statistics about the passers-by, or col- 
lecting mud for their nests, they take dust baths 
in the road. They usually build inside barns or 
covered bridges, lining their nests with feathers, 
but a case is recorded of a nest under the eaves of 
a house, which was made entirely of " rootlets and 
grass," though thickly lined with downy chicken 
feathers. Mr. Burroughs tells of a barn nest 
" saddled in the loop of a rope that was pendant 
from a peg in the peak." 



BELTED KINGFISHER. 57 

Of the notes of the barn swallow Mr. Bicknell 
says : " An almost universal misconception re- 
gards the swallows as a tribe of songless birds. 
But the barn swallow has as true claims to song 
as many species of long-established recognition as 
song birds. Its song is a low, chattering trill . . . 
often terminating with a clear liquid note with an 
accent as of interrogation, not unlike one of the 
notes of the canary. This song is wholly distinct 
from the quick, double - syllabled note which so 
constantly escapes the bird during flight." 



XVI. 

BELTED KINGFISHER. 

The robin lives on neighborly terms in our 
dooryard, the swift secretes himself in our chim- 
neys, the humming-bird hovers in our gardens, 
the barn swallow circles around our barns, the 
catbird talks to himself in our orchards, the oriole 
hangs his "hammock" from our elms, the bobo- 
link holds gay possession of our fields till the 
mower comes to dispute his claim, and the yellow 
hammer appoints himself inspector general of our 
ant-hills, fence-posts, and tree trunks ; but the 
kingfisher cares nothing for us or our habitations. 
He goes off by himself into the heart of the wil- 
derness, not to crouch among the brown leaves on 
the ground like the partridge, but to fly high and 



58 BIRDS THROUGH AN- OPERA-GLASS. 

far over river and lake, calling loudly to the 
echoes as he goes. 

He is the most marked of the trillers, having a 
loud, rapid call that Wilson compares to a watch- 
man's rattle, and that, as Mr. Burroughs ingen- 




iously suggests, reminds you of an alarm clock. He 
usually gives it when on the wing, and if on hear- 
ing him you look up in time, you will see a large, 
ungainly slate-blue bird, with an odd flight — his 
short tail making him out of proportion so that his 
wings seem too far back. As he flies over, you 
note his big, heavily-crested head, his dark collar, 



BELTED KINGFISHER. 59 

and his glistening white throat. I£ he lights on 
a dead stub by the water, and you can see the 
compact, oily plumage that is adapted for cold 
plunges, you will think him handsome in spite of 
his topheaviness. He sits like the catbird, and 
watches the fish come toward the surface. But 
before they know what has happened they are 
wriggling in his bill. After catching a fish he 
quickly carries it back to his perch, to be devoured 
at his leisure. 

The kingfisher shows us a new style of nest, 
though it might seem that there had been variety 
enough before. There was the " adobe house " 
of the robin, the coarse bundle of sticks gathered 
by the crow, the exquisite lichen-covered cup of 
the humming-bird, the loose, clumsy-looking nests 
of the catbird and cuckoo, the frame house rented 
by the bluebird, the tiny wall pocket glued to the 
chimney by the swift, the grass houses of the bob- 
olink and meadow-lark, the mud bowl of the barn 
swallow, the airy gray pocket of the oriole, and 
the snug wooden retreats of the chickadee and 
yellow hammer. But here is something stranger 
than any of them — a burrow in the earth, that 
might well be the hole of some shy animal rather 
than the home of a bird. It is usually dug in 
the banks of rivers or streams. 

As the kingfisher spends most of his time on 
the wing, his feet are small and weak, different 
enough from the powerful feet and claws of the 



60 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

blackbirds and orioles. What a woodsman the 
kingfisher must be ! Do the hemlock's longest 
branches tip to the east ? Does the lichen grow 
on the north side of the trees ? Ask him for his 
compass. He needs no trail. Follow him and he 
will teach you the secrets of the forest. For here 
lies the witchcraft of our new world halcyon, 
rather than in the charming of sailors' lives, or in 
the stilling of the sea. 

XVII. 

CHIP-BIRD OR CHIPPY; HAIR-BIRD; CHIPPING 
SPARROW; SOCIAL SPARROW. 

We have already had "chimney swallows " that 
were not swallows, crow blackbirds that were not 
crows, partridges that were grouse, and kingfishers 
that dug holes in the ground, besides bluebirds 
and humming-birds and robins and chickadees and 
catbirds and cuckoos, all crowded together ; and 
now we are coming to that vexatious family, the 
sparrows. How can any one be expected to re- 
member such a medley long enough to know the 
birds out of doors? I never really knew them 
until I pigeon-holed them, and I believe that is 
the best way. But how shall we go to work ? 

Ornithologists separate our birds into seventeen 
orders, and divide these into numerous families 
and genera and species. We should have to turn 



CHIPPY. 61 

pension-office clerks to get pigeon-holes enough for 
them ! But twelve of the seventeen we shall leave 
entirely alone, — the divers, all kinds of swim- 
mers, waders, herons, cranes, parrots, and others 
that most of us never see outside of museums. Of 
the five orders left, four are quickly disposed of. 
The partridge will be our only representative of 
the "gallinaceous birds," the cuckoos and king- 
fishers of the order of " cuckoos, etc.," the wood- 
peckers of the " woodpeckers, etc.," and the swift, 
humming-bird, night-hawk, and whippoorwill of 
the "goatsuckers, swifts, etc." 

There are so few of these, and they are so scat- 
tered, that it does not seem worth while to give up 
part of our pigeon-holes to them, so we will put 
them away in a drawer by themselves, and keep 
our pigeon-holes free for the one order left, — the 
highest of all, — that of the " perching birds." It 
has twenty-one families, but we need only four- 
teen holes because there are seven families that 
we shall not take up. So our best way is to paste 
the label "perching birds" over our fourteen 
holes, and then, while remembering that we have 
left out seven families, number each hole and put 
in the birds as they come in their natural order of 
development from low to high. 

The crow goes in No. 2 by himself at present. 
The bobolink, meadow-lark, crow blackbird, and 
oriole all go into No. 3, because they belong to the 
family of " blackbirds, orioles, etc.," although they 



62 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

represent different branches, or genera. Chippy 
goes into No. 4 to wait for the other "finches, 
sparrows, etc.," the barn swallow will go into No. 
6, which belongs to " the swallows," the catbird 
into No. 10, the chickadee into No. 12, and the 
robin and bluebird into No. 14, — the last hole, — 
as they belong to the most highly developed fam- 
ily of all the birds, that of the " thrushes, blue- 
birds, etc." 

This simplifies matters. The chimney swift 
belongs to an entirely different order from the 
swallows, — a much lower one, — and so was put 
in the drawer, together with the kingfisher, whose 
feet are weak and who nests in the ground. Now 
all the " perching birds " we have had fall readily 
into place. The crow is by himself in No. 2, as 
the blackbirds in No. 3 differ from him in having 
wives smaller than themselves, and in anatomical 
and technical peculiarities that are the foundation 
of all the divisions we have. 

But here is chippy in No. 4 ; let us see how he 
is related to the other birds. First, what does he 
look like? Although one of those "little gray 
birds " that vex the spirit of the tyro, he is well 
known as the smallest and most friendly of our 
sparrows. All the sparrows are small, dull colored 
birds, none of them being much more than half as 
large as a robin. But he is marked by a reddish- 
brown cap, edged by a delicate white line over eye 
and cheek. His back is streaked with grayish- 



CHIPPY. 63 

brown and black, his wings are crossed by narrow 
whitish bars, and underneath he is a pure light 
ash color. 

Notice the bill chippy has to crack seeds with. 
It is the short, thick, conical bill of the family, 
and contrasts not only with the long slender bills 
of the worm -eating robin and bluebird in No. 
14, but with those of the oriole, crow blackbird, 
and meadow-lark in No. 3. The bobolink shows 
the nearness of No. 3 and 4 in his partly conical 
bill, and also in flight, though, by coloring, he is 
more closely related to the crow in No. 2. It is 
hardly necessary to suggest the differences that 
separate chippy from the chimney swift, the ruffed 
grouse, the humming-bird, the cuckoo, and the 
ant-eating yellow hammer. 

Of our common sparrows chippy alone has no 
real song, but he trills away monotonously, — 
by the hour, you are tempted to think, — with 
cheerful perseverance that would grace a better 
cause. He is called " hair-bird " because he lines 
his nest with horse or cow hair, and when you 
think of the close observation and industry it takes 
to find this hair you will recognize not only the 
power of inherited habit but the fitness of the 
name hair-bird. 

Last summer a chipping sparrow built in a jas- 
mine bush in the crotch of a neighbor's piazza. 
When the little mother was startled by intruders 
she would dart into the bush, crouch down, flatten 



64 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

her head, and try to make herself invisible, but 
she had too many frights and at last abandoned 
her nest. In a grape-vine on top of a trellis in 
the garden in front of the cottage another chippy 
had built. She seemed to be fearless, never stir- 
ring even when we stood at the foot of the trellis 
and stared at her. 

I found several nests in Norway spruces. One 
was near a farm-house. It was on a bough hidden 
so skillfully under an evergreen twig that I had 
much ado to find it, and there was barely room for 
even the small mother bird to get up to it. But the 
four little dark blue eggs wreathed with purplish 
dots around the larger ends, as they lay clustered 
on their mat of brown rootlets, made a sight to 
repay a longer hunt. With all her care the poor 
mother was not able to conceal her little ones. A 
hungry chipmunk discovered them, and was shot 
by the farmer when it was swallowing the last one 
of the four. 

In summer the chipping birds haunt the piazza, 
coming almost to our feet for crumbs. Last season 
two broods were brought by their mothers, and it 
was diverting to watch them. The mothers drove 
each other about in a scandalous fashion, and, what 
was worse, would not feed each other's children, 
but turned their backs in the most hard-hearted 
way even when the hungry youngsters ran up in 
front of them and stood with wide open bills teas- 
ing for food. As the babies grew older I suspect 



CHIPPY. 65 

their mothers poisoned their minds, too, for as 
nearly as I could make out a coldness grew up be- 
tween the families of infants. 

The old chipping birds are very intelligent. 
The tujn of the head and the quick glance from 
the eye show that their familiar bravery is due to 
no thoughtless confidence, but is based on keen 
observation and bird wit. 

The young birds seem more trustful and are 
dear fluffy little creatures. When they get to be 
as big as their mothers and know perfectly well 
how to feed themselves, the lazy babies will often 
stand helplessly right in the middle of a handful 
of crumbs, and chirr at their mother till she picks 
the crumbs up and drops them in their bills. 

One day I found a young chippy sitting on the 
picket of a fence. His mother soon flew up onto 
the picket next to him with his dinner in her bill 
and leaned over trying to reach it across. It was 
a comical proceeding, the baby fluttering his 
wings, opening his mouth, crying out and bobbing 
toward his mother while she stretched across till 
— well, both birds came near a tumble before 
they gave it up. 

Chipping birds are always about, in the garden, 
on the lawn, and around the house. The back 
door with its boundless possibilities in the crumb 
line attracts them strongly. At one house, for 
several years, a number of them came to the back 
yard every day when the chickens were fed. They 



66 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

sat on the fence till the first rush and scramble 
were over, and then flew down among the hens to 
get their dinner. 



XVIII. 

SONG SPARROW. 

The song sparrow, of course, goes into the same 
pigeon-hole as chippy — No. 4, " finches, spar- 
rows, etc.," — showing the same sparrow traits in 
coloring, size, bill, and flight ; and the same con- 
trasts with the crow in No. 2, the " blackbirds, 
orioles, etc.," in No. 3, the " swallows " in No. 6, 
and the robin and bluebird among the " thrushes, 
bluebirds, etc.," of No. 14. But with all this, our 
little friend has a marked individuality, and dif- 
fers from his small cousin chippy in temper and 
charm. I may be prejudiced, but while I admire 
chippy for his bravery and intelligence I do not 
find him as winsome as this simple little bird with 
his homely cheeriness. 

In the spring the song sparrow comes North a 
few days after the robin, and although the chill 
from the snow banks gives him a sore throat that 
makes his voice husky, you may hear him singing 
as brightly as if he had come back on purpose to 
bring spring to the poor snow-bound farmers. 
Even his chirp — of rich contralto quality com- 
pared with the thin chip of his cousin — has a 



SONG SPARROW. 67 

genuine happy ring that raises one's spirits ; and 
when he throws up his head and sings the sweet 
song that gives him his name, you feel sure the 
world is worth living in. 

The song sparrow's brown coat has little beauty, 
but his dark breastpin, surrounded by brown 
streaks, sets off his light gray waistcoat to advan- 
tage ; and the brown topknot that he raises when 
interested gives him a winning air of sympathetic 
attention. 

The song sparrows are not about the house as 
much as the chippies, and last summer they began 
coming for crumbs a week later in the nesting 
season than their ubiquitous cousins. Then it 
was amusing to see the business-like way in which 
they hopped about, their tails perked up and 
their wings close to their sides. There was one 
that walked like a blackbird, and when he ran it 
seemed a waste of energy — he had so much more 
to do than if he had hopped ! 

The usual note of the song sparrow is a rich 
" tschip" as Thoreau gives it ; but when nesting it 
has an odd thin chip that sounds so like the note 
of a young bird that it deceived me into hunting- 
through the bushes when the old bird who was 
really making it was in plain sight. The spar- 
row's song is the first set song likely to attract 
your attention when listening to the birds near 
the house, and as Thoreau says, is " more honest- 
sounding than most.'' The song consists of one 



68 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

high note repeated three times, and a rapid run 
down the scale and back ; but it varies greatly 
with individuals, and almost every writer renders 
it differently. 

In choosing the site for its nest, the song spar- 
row adapts itself to circumstances with the grace 
of a true philosopher. At one time content with 
making a rude mat of straw at the bottom of a 
roadside brush heap, at another it builds in a 
willow, using the woolly catkins to soften the bed ; 
and frequently it nests right on the ground, when 
the farmers call it the " ground sparrow." But 
the prettiest site of any I have ever known was 
in a sweetbriar bush on the edge of the garden. 
Here the little mother could be lulled into her 
noon-day nap by the droning of the bumble-bees 
buzzing about the garden ; or, if she chose, watch 
the fluttering butterflies and quivering humming- 
birds hovering over the bright flowers. Every 
breath of air brought her the perfume of the briar 
leaves, and when the pink buds unfolded she could 
tell off the days of her brooding by the petals that 
fluttered to the ground. 



BLUE JAY. 69 

XIX. 

BLUE JAY. 

The blue jay comes with a dash and a flourish. 
As Thoreau says, he " blows the trumpet of win- 
ter."^ Unlike the chickadee, whose prevailing 
tints match the winter sky, and whose gentle day- 
day-day chimes with the softly falling snows, the 
blue jay would wake the world up. His " clario- 
net " peals over the villages asleep in the snow- 
drifts as if it would rouse even the smoke that 
drowses over their white roofs. He brings the 
vigor and color of winter. He would send the 
shivering stay-at-homes jingling merrily over the 
fields, and start the children coasting down the 
hills. Wake-up, wake-up, come-out, come-out he 
calls, and blows a blast to show what winter is 
good for. 

And so he flashes about, and screams and scolds 
till we crawl to the window to look at him. Ha ! 
what a handsome bird ! He has found the break- 
fast hung on the tree for him and clings to it 
pecking away with the appetite of a Greenlander. 
Not a hint of winter in his coloring ! Note his 
purplish back as he bends over, the exquisite 
cobalt blue, touched off with black and white on 
his wings, and the black barring on the tightly 
closed tail he is bracing himself by. How distin- 
guished his dark necklace and handsome blue 



TO BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

crest make him look ! There ! he is off again, 
and before we think where he is going we hear 
the echo of his rousing jphe-pliay, phe^Jiay from 
the depths of the woods. 




In many places the jays are common winter 
residents, pitching their tents with the hens and 
barnyard animals and comporting themselves with 
familiar assurance. But in this region they are 
irregular guests. Sometimes they are here for a 
few days in the fall, or visit us when the hawks 



BLUE JAY. 71 

return in spring, teasing the young observer by 
imitating the cry of the redtailed hawk. But if 
the fancy takes them they spend the winter with 
us, showing comparatively little of the timidity 
they feel in some localities. 

Last fall a party of jays stayed here for some 
time, but when I was congratulating myself on 
having them for the winter, they left, and did not 
return till the middle of January. Then one 
morning one of them appeared suddenly on a tree 
in front of the window. He seemed to have been 
there before, for he flew straight down to the corn 
boxes by the dining-room. The gray squirrels 
had nibbled out the sweetest part of the kernels, 
and he acted dissatisfied with what was left, drop- 
ping several pieces after he had picked them up. 
But at last he swallowed a few kernels and then 
took three or four in his bill at once and flew up 
in a maple. He must have deposited some of 
them in a crotch at the body of the tree, for after 
he had broken one in two under his claw — strik- 
ing it with " sledge-hammer blows " — he went back 
to the crotch, picked up something, flew back on 
the branch, and went through the process over 
again. The second time he flew down to the corn 
boxes he did the same thing — ate two or three 
kernels, and then filled his bill full and flew off 
— this time out of sight. Since then I have often 
seen him carry his corn off in the same way, giv- 
ing his head a little toss to throw the kernels back 



72 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

in his bill as he was loading up. Wilson calls 
attention to the fact that by this habit of carrying 
off kernels and seeds, the jay becomes an impor- 
tant tree-planting agent. 

What a good business man the blue jay would 
make ! All his motions are like the unique load- 
ing up performance — time - saving, decided, di- 
rect. Once during the first morning after his re- 
turn he flew down to the boxes from the tree over 
them and came so straight he looked as if falling 
through the air. He pecked at the bark of the 
trees as indifferently as he had examined the corn 
the squirrels had nibbled, but I thought he drank 
with some gusto. He seemed to be catching the 
rain drops that were running down the sides of 
the trees and filling the crevices of the bark. 

After he had flown off and the gray squirrels 
were comfortably settled at breakfast, he came 
dashing back round the corner in such a hurry 
he almost struck the squirrel on the lower corn 
box. The first thing I saw was a confusion of 
blue feathers and gray fur, and then a blue jay 
flying off to the evergreen, and a gray squirrel 
shaking his tail excitedly and starting from one 
side of the box to the other trying to collect his 
wits. By this time the blue jay had recovered 
from his surprise, and seeing that it was only a 
squirrel, hopped about in the spruce as full of 
business as if the collision had been planned. Not 
so with the poor squirrel ! He sprang up on the 



BLUE JAY. 73 

highest box, stretching straight up on his hind 
legs, with fore paws pressed against his breast 
and ears erect, his heart beating his sides and his 
tail hanging down shamefacedly as he looked 
anxiously toward the spruce where the blue jay 
had gone. Gradually the fear on his face changed 
to a comical look of bewilderment. Could that 
bird flying about as if nothing had happened be 
what struck him, or had he gone to sleep over his 
corn and had a bad dream ? He settled down on 
his haunches with an expression of inane confu- 
sion, and finally turned back into his corn box, a 
sorry contrast to the clear-headed blue jay. 

This was the first morning the jays came, and 
we were greatly entertained watching the develop- 
ment of affairs. There were only three birds 
that were regular patrons of the corn barrel res- 
taurant, while there were thirteen gray squirrels, 
and when the squirrels got over their first sur- 
prise they seemed to consider the jays an insig- 
nificant minority. There were no claw -to -bill 
tussles, for when a jay was eating on a corn box 
by the side of the tree, and a squirrel ran down 
the trunk right above him, and gave a jump that 
promised to land him on the jay's head, the bird 
would quietly fly off. But such meekness was no 
sign of discomfiture. The jays came back as often 
as they were driven away. If the squirrels ob- 
jected to their eating on a corner of the box with 
them, the jays would hop down on the snow and 



74 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

pick up the corn the squirrels had scattered there. 
They were so persistent, and at the same time so 
dignified and peaceable, that the squirrels could 
not hold out against them ; and though for a time 
the birds took advantage of the squirrels' laziness 
and got a good breakfast mornings before the 
sleepy fur coats appeared, two or three weeks of 
10° — 20° below zero silenced the squirrel's last 
prior-claims argument and the jays were allowed 
to eat undisturbed from the same boxes with 
them. 

But it is not only the squirrels that the blue 
jays dine with, for one day last winter the little 
three-year-old came running out of the dining- 
room in great excitement, crying, " Oh, grandpa ! 
come quick ! There are three partridges, and one 
of them is a blue jay ! " Indeed, the other day 
the blue jays quite took possession of the corn 
barrels that are the special property of the part- 
ridges. The barrels stand under the branches of 
a Norway spruce on either side of a snow-shoe 
path that runs from the house, and though the 
jays were self-invited guests, I could not help ad- 
miring the picture they made, they flying about 
and sitting on the barrels, the dark green of the 
boughs bringing out the handsome blue of their 
coats. 

But the spot where I have found the blue jays 
most at home is in the dense coniferous forests of 
the Adirondacks. I shall never forget seeing a 



BLUE JAY. 75 

flock of them on Black Mountain. From the top 
of the mountain the wilderness looked like a sea 
of forest-clad hills, with an occasional reef out- 
lined by surf, for the largest lakes seemed like 
tracery in the vast expanse of forest. The im- 
pressive stillness was broken only by the rare 
cries of a pair of hawks that circled over the 
mountain ; for the most part they soared, silent as 
the wilderness below them. Coming down into 
the forest primeval, where the majestic hemlocks 
towered straight toward the sky, and their mas- 
sive knotted roots bound down the granite bowl- 
ders that showed on the mountain side — there we 
found the blue jays in their home. A flock of 
them lived together, feeding on wild berries and 
beechnuts, sporting among the ferns and mosses, 
and drinking from the brook that babbled along 
near the trail. What a home our handsome birds 
had chosen ! But the memory of the spot is 
dreary. Unmoved by the beauty of the scene, to 
which the blue jays gave color and life ; unawed 
by the benedicite of the hemlocks ; betraying the 
trust of the friendly birds, the boy of the party 
crept into their very home and shot down one 
after another of the family as they stood resistless 
before him. To-day the pitiful lament of the 
brave old birds haunts me, for, forgetting to fear 
for themselves, those that were left flew about in 
wild distress, and their cries of almost human 
suffering reached us long after we had left the 
desecrated spot. 



76 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XX. 

YELLOW-BIRD ; AMERICAN GOLDFINCH ; THISTLE- 
BIRD. 

Throw yourself down among the buttercups 
and daisies some cloudless summer day and look 
up at the sky till its wondrous blueness thrills 
through you as an ecstacy. Then catch your 
breath and listen, while out of the air comes a 
clear fluid note of rapture. Ah ! there is the 
little goldfinch — a bit of the sun's own gold — 
sauntering through the air, rising and falling to 

the rhythm of his own | ' 9 * \ This way and 

dee-ree dee-ee-ree. 

that he flits, at each call fluttering his wings and 
then letting himself float down on the air. Spring 
up from the meadow and follow him till down 
from the blue sky he comes to alight airily on a 
pink thistle -top. Then as he bends over and 
daintily plucks out the tiny seeds that would soon 
have been ballooning through the air, you can ad- 
mire the glossy black cap, wings, and tail that 
touch off his slender gold form. 

Who would ever take this fairy-like beauty for 
a cousin of our plain chippy and song sparrow ? 
And yet — his bill and size and family traits 
are the same. Pigeon-hole No. 4 was marked 
" finches, sparrows, etc.," and he is one of the 



YELLOW -BIRD. 



77 



finches. He seems near enough like the sparrows 
too, when you think how unlike he is to the black- 
birds and orioles of No. 3, or the swallows of No. 
6, the catbird of No. 10, and the robin or blue- 
bird oi No. 14. 

Even the chickadee from No. 12 is a strong 
contrast to him. His slender frame fits him for 




flying through the air, while the chickadee's 
plump, fluffy figure is suited to flitting about tree- 
trunks and branches. Early in the spring the 
chickadee goes to the woods, and, using his pointed 
bill as a pick-axe, picks out a nest hole in the side 
of a stump or tree trunk. But the goldfinch 
waits until July, and then, going to the nearest 
orchard, chooses a plum or apple-tree crotch and 
sets about making a basket to fit it. He peels 



78 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

the bark from some slender weed for the outside, 
and pilfers a thistle-top or the silk storeroom of 
some other plant for a lining. 

An old nest the children brought me last fall 
had a veritable feather-bed of down in it, on top 
of the usual silky lining, and it stuffed the cup so 
full there seemed hardly room enough for the 
eggs. It looked as if two or three whole thistle- 
tops had been put in and matted down. 

Last year a pair of goldfinches built in a plum- 
tree by the side of a carriage drive, so low that 
on tiptoe I could reach into the nest to count over 
the eggs from day to day. And what dainty light 
blue shells they had. Just as if bits of blue sky 
had fallen into the nest ! The mother-bird must 
have guessed my delight in her treasures, for she 
would sit quietly on a tres a few feet away with 
an air that said quite plainly, " Are n't they dear 
little eggs ? You can look at them just as long 
as you like. I '11 wait here till you get through ! " 

As the goldfinches nest so much later than 
most birds, the young are barely out before the 
warblers and other of the birds begin migrating. 
I have seen the little ones teasing their father for 
food late in September. One day I saw one fed 
on the head of a big sunflower. 

I am afraid Mr. Goldfinch is not a good dis- 
ciplinarian, for his babies follow him around flut- 
tering their wings, opening their mouths, and 
crying tweet-ee, tweet-ee tweet-ee, tweet-ee, with 



YELLOW -BIRD. 79 

an insistence that suggests lax family government. 
Some one should provide him with a bundle of 
timothy stalks ! And yet who would have our 
fairy use the rod ? Just listen to him some day 
as he, flies away from his nest, singing over to him- 
self in tones of exquisite love and tenderness 
his sweet bay-bee, bay-ee-bee, and you will feel 
that the little father has a secret better than any 
known to the birch. 

Our goldfinch is not a musician when it comes 
to his long song. That is a canary jumble of 
notes whose greatest charm is its light-hearted- 
ness. But though he is not as finished a songster 
as the canary, during the summer he is much 
prettier, for then his yellow suit is richly trimmed 
with black markings. In September however he 
loses his beauty, and until the next April or May, 
when his perilous travels are over for the season, 
looks much like his plain little wife. His black 
trimmings are gone, and he has become flaxen- 
brown above and whitish-brown below, — quite 
commonplace. 

In connection with this protective change in 
plumage the "Naturalist" gives an interesting in- 
stance of protective habit, in which the wise birds 
disguised themselves by the help of their bright 
summer coats. A flock of them were dining on 
top of the stalks of yellow mullein that covered 
the slope of the embankment by which the ob- 
server and his party passed. He says : " The 



80 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

mulleins were ranged in stiff files, like soldiers in 
yellow uniforms, and each bird as we passed re- 
mained motionless, looking like a continuation of 
the spike, of which one might easily be deceived 
into thinking it part and parcel. As soon as we 
had passed by, the birds were again busy, flitting 
from plant to plant, feeding on the seeds and 
enjoying themselves." 

What a difference it makes in our thought of 
winter to know that our little goldfinch will never 
find it too cold to visit us. Being a vegetarian, his 
storehouse is always well filled, for if the snow 
covers the seeds he would gather from the brown 
weed tops, he goes to the alders in the swamp ; 
and if they fail him he is sure to find plenty in the 
seeds of the hemlock, the spruce, and the larch. 



XXI. 

PHCEBE. 

Classing the crow -blackbird, bobolink, and 
oriole together in No. 3 by their striking colors, 
and distinguishing the sparrows in No. 4 by their 
striped backs, the common flycatchers, who belong 
in our first pigeon-hole, No. 1, stand out as un- 
striped, dull, dark grayish birds, with light breasts. 
Mr. Burroughs describes them as " sharp-shoul- 
dered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular 
color, of little elegance of flight or movement." 



PHCEBE. 81 

Knowing that the vocal organs of the flycatch- 
ers are undeveloped, you are not surprised by the 
contrast they present to the sweet- voiced sparrows 
and finches, the talkative catbird, and the bobo- 
link, who is always bubbling over with song, nor 
do you wonder at the abrupt call of the phoebe. 
Although it resembles a jerking repetition of 
phoe-be, phce-be^ it is not precisely what the word 
would indicate. The first part of the call is com- 
paratively clear, but the second is a longer rasping 
note, with a heavily trilled r, making the whole 
more like phoe-ree, phoe-ree. 

When the birds first begin coming north you 
hear this note. When you have traced it to its 
source, — and it is an excellent habit to see every 
bird whose notes attract your attention, — the dull 
olive gray coat and the whitish vest, with its 
tinge of pale yellow, are soon forgotten in watch- 
ing the odd ways of the bird. 

Somewhat longer than a song sparrow, — two 
thirds as large as a robin, — he is strikingly unlike 
the cheery, busy sparrow, or, in fact, like any of 
the birds we have had. There he sits on a branch, 
in an attitude that would shock the neat songsters. 
His wings droop at his sides, and his tail hangs 
straight down in the most negligent fashion. He 
seems the personification of listlessness ; but, — 
focus your glass on him, — his wings are vibrating, 
and his tail jerks nervously at intervals. Suddenly 
he starts into the air, snaps his bill loudly over an 



82 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

unsuspecting insect he has been lying in wait for, 
and before you breathe settles back on the branch 
with a spasmodic jerk of the tail. 

And now, as he sits looking for another victim, 
you have a good chance to note, through your 
glass, the peculiarities of the bill that gave such 
a resounding " click." Birds' bills are their tools, 
— the oriole's is long and pointed for weaving, 
the chickadee's short and strong to serve as a 
pickaxe ; but when the nest does not call for a 
tool of its own the bill conforms to the food habits 
of the bird, — as the white man's needs are met 
by knife and fork, and the Chinaman's by chop- 
sticks. So the bills of the robin and bluebird, 
you remember, are long, thin, and slender, — well 
fitted for a worm diet, — while the sparrows, who 
live mostly on seeds, have the short, stout, cone- 
shaped finch bill. In the same way flycatchers' 
bills are specially adapted for their use, that of 
catching the insects upon which they live. At 
the base there are long stiff bristles, and the upper 
half of the bill hooks over the lower so securely at 
the end that when an insect is once entrapj>ed it 
has small chance of escape. 

The phoebe is fond of building in a crotch of 
the piazza, on the beams of old sheds, and under 
bridges, apparently indifferent to the dust and 
noise of its position ; but away from the immediate 
haunts of man it usually nests in caves or rocky 
ledges, and sometimes takes possession of the up- 



KINGBIRD. 83 

turned roots of a fallen tree. I well remember 
finding a cave nest when we were children. We 
let ourselves down into the cave by a crevice in 
the lime rock, and after groping our way among 
the loqse stones that made the floor, and — as our 
anxious fathers insisted — the roof of the cave, 
crawling along low passages, wedging between 
narrow walls, and hunting for stepping stones 
across the dark pools that reflected the glimmer 
of our candles, we suddenly came into a flood of 
daylight, — a crack in the rocks wide enough to 
make a dangerous pitfall for the horses and cows 
that grazed overhead, but chosen by the phoebes 
as the safest possible nook for rearing a brood of 
baby birds. Down the sides of this shaft the rain 
trickled, keeping the moss green and giving the 
tiny ferns strength to cling to the crannies of the 
rock. On a ledge just in reach of the tallest of 
us the wise pair of birds had built their nest, care- 
less of the dark cavern below, and happy among 
the moss and ferns. 

XXII. 

KINGBIRD; BEE MARTIN. 

The kingbird is noticeably smaller than the 
robin, but is larger and more compactly built than 
most of the flycatchers. The sobriety of his plain 
blackish coat and white vest are relieved by a 
colored patch that may sometimes be espied under 



84 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

his crest, and also by a white tip to his tail, which, 
when spread in flight, has the effect of a white 
crescent. He has a peculiar flight, holding his 
head up and using his wings in a labored way as 
if he were swimming. When looking for his din- 
ner he often flutters obliquely into the air, display- 
ing his shining white breast and fan-shaped tail 
to the best advantage. 

All the disagreeable qualities of the flycatchers 
seem to centre in this bird. His note is a harsh, 
scolding twitter. His crown proclaims him king, 
not by right, but by might, — such a bickering 
pugilist, such a domineering autocrat he is. The 
crow's life becomes a plague when this tormentor 
gives chase ; and the smaller birds find themselves 
driven at the point of the bill from the fences they 
had considered public highways. 

But whatever may be the exact limit of his 
quarrelsomeness it stops short at home ; old king- 
birds are certainly tender guardians of their 
young. I once watched a pair in search of food. 
They flew down to the haycocks in the meadow 
near the orchard, sat there reconnoitring for a 
moment, and then jumped into the grass to snap 
up the insect they had discovered. Flying back 
to the young they flirted their wings and tails as 
they dropped the morsel into the gaping red 
throats, and in an instant were off again for a 
hunt in the air, or in another tree. And so they 
kept hard at work, looking everywhere till the 



WOOD PEWEE. , 85 

voracious appetites of their infants were satisfied. 
DeKay says of the kingbird's diet: "-He feeds 
on berries and seeds, beetles, canker-worms, and 
insects of every description. By this, and by his 
inveterate hostility to rapacious birds, he more 
than compensates for the few domestic bees with 
which.he varies his repast." To this DeKay adds 
the interesting statement : " Like the hawks and 
owls, he ejects from his mouth, in the shape of 
large pellets, all the indigestible parts of insects 
and berries." 

XXIII. 

i 

WOOD PEWEE. 

In size, coloring, and habit you will hardly dis- 
tinguish the wood pewee from the phoebe, al- 
though the former is somewhat smaller. These 
two birds stand apart from all the others we have 
had. The chimney swift and barn swallow also 
live on insects, but measure the difference in their 
methods of hunting. The swift zigzags through 
the air, picking up his dinner as he goes; the 
swallow skims the rivers, and circles over the 
meadows and through the sky, without so much 
as an ungraceful turn of the wing to suggest that 
he is dining. But the phoebe and the wood pe- 
wee lie in wait for their victims. They cunningly 
assume indifference until the unwary gauzy-wing 
floats within range, then spring on it, snap it up, 
and fall back to wait for another unfortunate. 



86 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

And when not hunting, how silent and motion- 
less they sit, the phoebe on the ridgepole of a 
barn, the wood pewee on a twig in the flickering 
sunlight and shade of the green woods ; neither 
of them uttering more than an occasional note, 
and scarcely stirring unless to look over their 
shoulders. 

Though the phcebe and wood pewee look so 
much alike, in reality they are as much at odds 
as a farmer and a poet. Unlike the nest of the 
phoebe, the wood pewee's is essentially woodsy 
and distinctive. It is an exquisite little structure, 
saddled on to a lichen-covered limb. Made of fine 
roots and delicate stems of grass and seed pods, 
it is covered with bits of lichen or moss glued on 
with saliva, so that like the humming-bird's nest it 
seems to be a knob on the branch. It is a shallow 
little nest, and the four richly crowned creamy 
eggs, though tiny enough in themselves, leave 
little room for the body of the brooding mother. 

In temper the phoebe is so prosaic that we nat- 
urally connect it with the beams of barns and 
cow sheds ; while the wood pewee, associated with 
the cool depths of the forest, is fitted to inspire 
poets, and to stir the deepest chords of human 
nature with its plaintive, far-reaching voice. 

It has moods for all of ours. Its faint, lisping 



u 



pe-ee 



LEAST FLYCATCHER 87 

suggests all the happiness of domestic love and 
peace. At one moment its minor 

f 

come to me • i 

with the liquidity of a " U " of sound f_#Lr 
is fraught with all the pathos and yearning of a 
desolated human heart. At another, its tender, 
motherly ^ p ^ # ^ 

i ! i ! ' i 

dear-ie dear-ie dear 

with which it lulls its little ones, is as soothing 
to the perplexed and burdened soul as the soft 
breathing of the wind through the pine needles, 
or the caressing ripple of the sunset-gilded waves 
of a mountain lake. 



XXIV. 

LEAST FLYCATCHER. 

If you have been in the country, or even in 
one of our smaller towns during the spring and 
summer, you may have noticed the reiteration of 
an abrupt call of two notes — che-beeld che-heck 1 
coming from the apple-trees and undergrowth. If 
you have traced it you have discovered a small 
gray bird, in coat and habit a miniature of the 
phoebe and wood pewee, jerking not only his tail 
but his whole body with his emphatic call. 

This small bird seems a piquant satire on the 



88 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

days of tournament and joust, when knights 
started out with leveled lances to give battle to 
every one they met, He is a fearless little war- 
rior, snapping his bill ominously as he charges, 
full tilt, at his enemy. 

Last summer on passing a thicket I heard this 
snapping, together with loud calls of c7ie-beck f , 
and stopped to see what was happening. There, 
in a low willow, I found a family of young sun- 
ning themselves while their mother brought them 
their dinner. It seemed a most peaceable scene, 
but a picket fence ran along just back of the wil- 
low, and I soon discovered that this was the tilt 
yard. Whenever a song sparrow or pewee hap- 
pened to light there and stretch its wings for a 
sun bath, the fierce little mother would suddenly 
appear, dart at the unoffending bird, and fairly 
throw him off the fence with her abrupt onset. 

After unseating her enemy she would fly off as 
fast as she had come, career about in the air till 
she had snapped up a fly or miller, dart back, 
thrust it into one of the open mouths with a jab 
that threatened to decapitate the little one, and 
seemed to mean, " There, take ifc quick if you 've 
got to have it," and with a flirt of the tail and 
wings, before I had time for a second look, would 
be off in hot pursuit of another insect. 

I wanted to see if she would be afraid of me, 
and so crept up by the fence, almost under the 
baby birds. Two of them sat there side by side, 



UED-WINGED BLACKBIRD. 89 

in the most affectionate manner, nestling down on 
the branch with their soft white feathers fluffed 
out prettily. They did not mind me, and closed 
their eyes as if the warm sunlight made them 
sleepy. All of a sudden their mother flew up to 
one of them with a fly, but was so startled on see- 
ing me that instead of giving it to him she sprang 
up on top of his head and was off like a flash, 
almost tumbling him off the branch, and leaving 
him very much scared and bewildered. As soon 
as her nerves recovered from the shock she came 
back again and went on with her work as if I had 
not been there. The father seemed to be as rest- 
less and pugnacious as the mother, and, if appear- 
ances were to be trusted, was quarreling with his 
neighbors in a tree near by, while his wife guarded 
the picket and fed her young. 

XXV. 

RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD. 

The large flocks of blackbirds seen coming 
north in the spring are confusing at first, but by 
careful observation you will soon be able to dis- 
criminate between them. Sometimes the crow 
blackbird and the red-wing fly together, but they 
more commonly go in separate flocks. At a dis- 
tance, the flight of the two is perhaps the most 
distinctive feature — the " keel-tail " steering ap- 



90 BIRDS THROUGH AN' OPERA-GLASS. 

paratus of the crow blackbird marking him any- 
where. Then, though they both belong in the 
same pigeon-hole, the keel-tailed is a half larger, 
and the red-wing a trifle smaller than the robin. 
Known more familiarly, the red-wing lacks the 
noisy obtrusiveness of his awkward cousin, and 
usually prefers the field to the dooryard. 

Though as I write the roads are being broken 
through the drifted snow by plough and kettle, as 
I turn over the crumpled leaves of the small note- 
book I have carried on so many tramps, the first 
faint, penciled notes I find on the red-wing take 
me back into May, and, in fancy, we are again 
starting down the hill to the swampy meadows 
where 

" The red-wing" flutes his o-ka-lee." 

Did you ever see a meadow full of cowslips ? 
Here is the true field of the cloth of gold. It 
looks as if father Sun had crumbled up sunbeams 
and scattered the bits over the meadow ! As you 
sink into the soft wet ground, every few steps 
bring you to a luxuriant clump of the tender 
green plants lit up by flower cups of glistening 
gold. Each bunch seems more beautiful than the 
last, and, like a child, I would carry the whole 
field full of flowers home in my arms ! This sun- 
garden is the red-wing's playground. As we stroll 
along, he flies over our heads calling out o-ka-lee, 
and then, with outstretched wings, soars slowly 
down to the ground, where he sits and wags his 
tail as fast as a catbird. 



RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD. 91 

As Tlioreau says, his red wing marks him as 
effectually as a soldier's epaulets. This scarlet 
shoulder cap is so striking against the bird's black 
coat that the careless observer does not notice its 
border of brownish yellow, even when it shades 
into white, as it does in some of the western 
species. With Madam Blackbird the contrast is 
not so great, for she is not as pure black as her 
husband, having brownish streaks that, even at a 
distance, give her a duller look ; and then her 
epaulets are more salmon than scarlet. Still the 
effect is pleasing, and it is only a matter of taste 
if we do not admire her as much as her spouse. 

I was unable to go to the meadows during the 
nesting season, and the next notes I find in my 
book were taken in the middle of June. Then 
the young were hidden in the grass, and the old 
birds followed us from spot to spot, screaming 
loudly as they circled near us, or hovered low over 
our heads. Perhaps their cries were to warn 
their children, for, although there were three of 
us, and we examined carefully all the places where 
they showed the most concern, we succeeded in 
scaring up only one rusty-coated youngster. 

Two weeks later, in the warm days of July, 
the red-wings seemed to have left the meadows for 
the trees that skirted the alder swamp, and fam- 
ilies of old and young were sitting with their 
cousin grackles in the willows and on the rail 
fence, while some flew up as I walked through an 



92 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

opening in the swamp where the cat-tails stood 
guard, and the long -banded rushes soughed like 
wind in a forest. 



XXVI. 

HAIRY WOODPECKER. 

The habits of the woodpecker family are more 
distinctive, perhaps, than those of any group of 
the birds we have been considering, and the most 
superficial observer cannot fail to recognize its 
members. 

Woodpeckers — the very name proclaims them 
unique. The robin drags his fish-worm from its 
hiding place in the sod, and carols his happiness 
to every sunrise and sunset ; the sparrow eats 
crumbs in the dooryard and builds his nest in a 
sweetbriar ; the thrushes turn over the brown 
leaves for food and chant their matins among the 
moss and ferns of the shadowy forest ; the gold- 
finch balances himself on the pink thistle or yel- 
low mullein top, while he makes them " pay toll " 
for his visit, and then saunters through the air in 
the abandonment of blue skies and sunshine ; the 
red-wing flutes his o-ha-lee over cat-tails and cow- 
slips ; the bobolink, forgetting everything else, 
rollicks amid buttercups and daisies ; but the 
woodpecker finds his larder under the hard bark 
of the trees, and, oblivious to sunrise and sunset, 



HAIRY WOODPECKER. 93 

flowering marsh and laughing meadow, clings 
close to the side of a stub, as if the very sun him- 
self moved around a tree trunk ! 

But who knows how much these grave mono- 
maniacs have discovered that lies a sealed book 




to all the world besides ? Why should we scorn 
them ? They are philosophers ! They have the se- 
cret of happiness. Any bird could be joyous with 
plenty of blue sky and sunshine, and the poets, 
from Chaucer to Wordsworth, have relaxed their 
brows at the sight of a daisy ; but what does the 
happy goldfinch know of the wonders of tree 
trunks, and what poet could find inspiration in a 
dead stub on a bleak November day ? Jack Frost 
sends both thrush and goldfinch flying south, and 



94 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

the poets shut their study doors in his face, draw- 
ing their arm-chairs up to the hearth while they 
rail at November. But the wise woodpecker 
clings to the side of a tree and fluffing his feathers 
about his toes makes the woods reverberate with 
his cheery song, — for it is a song, and bears an 
inrportant part in nature's orchestra. Its rhyth- 
mical rat tap, tap, tap, tap, not only beats time 
for the chickadees and nuthatches, but is a reveille 
that sets all the brave winter blood tingling in our 
veins. 

There the hardy drummer stands beating on 
the wood with all the enjoyment of a drum major. 
How handsome he looks with the scarlet cap on 
the back of his head, and what a fine show the 
white central stripe makes against the glossy 
black of his back ! 

Who can say how much he has learned from 
the wood spirits ? What does he care for rain or 
blinding storm ? He can never lose his way. No 
woodsman need tell him how the hemlock branches 
tip, or how to use a lichen compass. 

Do you say the birds are gone, the leaves have 
fallen, the bare branches rattle, rains have black- 
ened the tree trunks ? What does he care ? All 
this makes him rejoice ! The merry chickadee 
hears his shrill call above the moaning of the 
wind and the rattling of the branches, for our 
alchemist is turning to his lichen workshop. 

The sealed book whose pictures are seen only 



HAIRY WOODPECKER. 95 

by children and wood fairies opens at his touch. 
The black unshaded tree trunks turn into en- 
chanted lichen palaces, rich with green and gold 
of every tint. The "pert fairies and the dapper 
elves " have left their magic circles in the grass, 
and trip lightly around the soft green velvet moss 
mounds so well suited for the throne of their 
queen. Here they find the tiny moss spears Lowell 
christened, "Arthurian lances," and quickly arm 
themselves for deeds of fairy valor. Here, too, are 
dainty silver goblets from which they can quaff 
the crystal globes that drop one by one from the 
dark moss high on the trees after rain. And 
there — what wonders in fern tracery, silver fili- 
gree and coral for the fairy Guinevere ! 

But hark ! the children are coming — and off 
the grave magician flies to watch their play from 
behind a neighboring tree trunk. There they 
come, straight to his workshop, and laugh in glee 
at the white chips he has scattered on the ground. 

They are in league with the fairies, too, and 
cast magic spells over all they see. First they spy 
the upturned roots of a fallen tree. It is a moun- 
tain! And up they clamber, to overlook their 
little world. And that pool left by the fall rains. 
Ha ! It is a lake ! And away they go, to cross 
it bravely on a bridge of quaking moss. 

As they pass under the shadow of a giant hem- 
lock and pick up the cones for playthings, they 
catch sight of the pile of dark red sawdust at the 



96 BIRDS THROUGH AN' OPERA-GLASS. 

foot of the tree and stand open-mouthed while the 
oldest child tells of a long ant procession she saw 
there when each tiny worker came to the door to 
drop its borings from its jaws. How big their 
eyes get at the story ! If the woodpecker could 
only give his cousin the yellow hammer's tragic 
sequel to it ! 

But soon they have found a new delight. A 
stem of basswood seeds whirls through the air to 
their feet. They all scramble for it. What a 
pity they have no string ! The last stem they 
found was a kite and a spinning air-top for a day's 
play. But this — never mind — there it goes up 
in the air dancing and whirling like a gay young 
fairy treading the mazes with the wind. 

" Just see this piece of moss ! How pretty ! " 
And so they go through the woods, till the brown 
beech leaves shake with their laughter, and the 
gray squirrels look out of their oriel tree trunk 
windows to see who goes by, and the absorbed 
magician — who can tell how much fun he steals 
from his lofty observation post to make him con- 
tent with his stub ! 

Why should he fly south when every day brings 
him some secret of the woods, or some scene like 
this that his philosopher's stone can turn to happi- 
ness ? Let us proclaim him the sage of the birds ! 

If he could speak ! The children would gather 
about him for tales of the woodsprites ; the stu- 
dent of trees would learn facts and figures enough 



HAIRY WOODPECKER. 97 

to store a book ; and the mechanic ! Just watch 
the dexterous bird as he works ! 

A master of his trade, he has various methods. 
One day in September he flew past me with a 
loud scream, and when I came up to him was 
hard at excavating. His claws were fast in the 
bark on the edge of the hole, and he seemed to be 
half clinging to it, half lying against it. His stiff 
tail quills helped to brace him against the tree, 
and he drilled straight down, making the bark fly 
with his rapid strokes. When the hole did not 
clear itself with his blows, he would give a quick 
scrape with his bill and drill away again. Sud- 
denly he stopped, picked up something, and flew 
up on a branch with it. He had found what he 
was after. And what a relish it proved ! I could 
almost see him holding it on his tongue. 

Another day in November he had to work 
harder for his breakfast, and perhaps it was for- 
tunate. The night before there had been a sharp 
snowstorm from the north, so that in passing 
through the woods all the trees and undergrowth 
on the south of me were pure white, while on the 
opposite side the gray trees with all their confu- 
sion of branches, twigs, and noble trunks stood out 
in bold relief. The snow that had fallen made it 
rather cold standing still, and I would have been 
glad to do part of Mr. Hairy's work myself. But 
he needed no help. He marched up the side of 
the stub, tapping as he went, and when his bill 



98 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

gave back the sound for which he had been listen- 
ing, he began work without ado. This bark must 
have been harder or thicker than the other, for 
instead of boring straight through, he loosened it 
by drilling, first from one side and then from the 
other. When he could not get it off in this way, 
he went above, and below, to try to start it, so 
that, before he found his worm he had stripped 
off pieces of bark several inches long and fully 
two across. He was so much engrossed that I 
came to the very foot of the stub without disturb- 
ing him. 

Indeed, woodpeckers are not at all shy here 
but work as unconcernedly by the side of the 
house as anywhere else. Once I was attracted by 
the cries of a hairy, and creeping up discovered a 
mother feeding her half-grown baby. She flew 
off when she saw me, probably warning the little 
fellow to keep still, for he stayed where she left 
him for five or ten minutes as if pinioned to the 
branch, crouching close, and hardly daring to stir 
even his head. Then, as she did not come back, 
and he saw no reason to be afraid of me, he flew 
off independently to another limb, and marched 
up the side arching his neck and bowing his head 
as much as to say, " Just see how well I walk ! " 



DOWNY WOODPECKER. 99 

XXVII. 

DOWNY WOODPECKER. 

The downy looks so much like the hairy that it 
would be easy to confound them if it were not for 
the difference in size. The downy is fully two 
inches shorter than the hairy. As you see him 
on a tree at a distance, the white stripe on his 
back is bounded by black, or as Thoreau expresses 
it, " his cassock is open behind, showing his white 
robe." Above this stripe is a large check of black 
and white, and below on a line with the tips of 
his wings seems to be a fine black and white 
check, while, if he is an adult male, a scarlet 
patch on the back of his head sets off his black 
and white dress. 

Seen only a rod away, as I see him through the 
window in winter, clinging to a tree, and picking 
at the suet hung out for him, the white central 
stripe of his back is marked off above by a black 
line which goes across to meet the black of his 
shoulders. From the middle of this and at right 
angle to it, another black line goes straight up 
towards his head, so carrying on the line of the 
white stripe, and forming the dividing line of the 
two white blocks. This, again, meets the point 
of a black V, so broad as to be almost a straight 
line. On this V lies the red patch of the back 
of his head. Over his eye is a white line that ex- 



100 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

tends back to meet the red patch. What at a 
distance looked like fine checking at the base of 
his wings proves to be white lining across the 
black. 

The downy comes about us here with the same 
familiarity as the hairy, and it was only a few 
weeks ago that the cook brought me one she 
found imprisoned between the sashes of her win- 
dow. He was scared, poor little fellow, and wrig- 
gled excitedly, trying to force my hand open. 
When I had taken a look at his pretty brown 
eyes I carried him to the front door, and off he 
flew to the nearest tree where he began pecking 
at the bark as if nothing had happened. 



XXVIII. 

WHITE-BELLIED NUTHATCH ; DEVIL-DOWN HEAD. 

Crossbills, snow buntings, blue jays, pine 
finches, pine grosbeaks, goldfinches, and some- 
times other birds visit us here at irregular inter- 
vals during the winter, but there are four little 
friends that never desert us, no matter how long 
the winter lasts. They form a novel quartette, 
for the chickadee whistles the air, the nuthatch 
sings his meagre alto through his nose, and the 
two woodpeckers — the hairy and downy — beat 
their drums as if determined to drown the other 

9 

parts. But they are a merry band, with all their 



WHITE-BELLIED NUTHATCH. 101 

oddities, and wander about giving concerts wher- 
ever they go, till the woods are alive again, and 
we forget that we have ever missed the summer 
birds. 

When the drums get too much absorbed in 
their tree trunks, the alto and air go serenading 
by themselves, and who knows what gossip they 
indulge in about the grave magicians' day dreams, 
or how gayly they swear to stand by each other 
and never be put down by these drums ! They 
are old chums, and work together as happily as 
Mr. and Mrs. Spratt, the chickadee whistling his 
merry chick-a-dee-dee, dee, dee as he clings to a 
twig in the tree top, and the nuthatch answering 
back with a jolly little yank, yank, yank, as he 
hangs, head down, on the side of a tree trunk. 
What a comic figure he makes there ! 

Trying to get a view of you, he throws his head 
back and stretches himself away from the tree till 
you wonder he does not fall off. His black cap 
and slate-blue coat are almost hidden, he raises 
his white throat and breast up so high. 

" Devil-down-head " he is called from this habit 
of walking down the trees, since instead of walk- 
ing straight down backwards, as the woodpeck- 
ers do, he prefers to obey the old adage and 
" follow his nose." A lady forgetting his name 
once aptly described him to me as " that little up- 
side-down bird," for he will run along the under 
side of a branch with as much coolness as a fly 
would cross the ceiling. 



102 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

One of his popular names is " sapsucker," for 
our nuthatch has a sweet tooth, and when the 
farmers tap the trees in spring he "happens 
round " at the sugar bush to see what sort of ma- 
ple syrup they are to have. He tests it well, tak- 
ing a sip at " the calf " where it oozes out from 




the gashing of the axe, tasting it as it dries along 
the spile, and finally on the rim of the buckets. 

But his most interesting name is — nuthatch ! 
How does he come by it ? That seems a riddle. 
Some cold November day put on a pair of thick 
boots and go to visit the beeches. There in their 
tops are the nuthatches, for they have deserted 
the tree trunks for a frolic. They are beechnut- 
ting ! And that with as much zest as a party of 



WHITE-BELLIED NUTHATCH. 108 

school-children starting out with baskets and pails 
on a holiday. Watch them now ! What clumsy- 
work they make of it, trying to cling to the 
beechnut burr and get the nuts out at the same 
time. # It 's a pity the chickadee can't give them 
a few lessons ! They might better have kept to 
their tree trunks. But they persist, and after 
tumbling off from several burrs, finally snatch 
out a nut and fly off with it as calmly as if they 
had been dancing about among the twigs all their 
days. Away they go till they come to a maple or 
some other rough-barked tree, when they stick 
the nut in between the ridges of the bark, ham- 
mer it down, and then, when it is so tightly 
wedged that the slippery shell cannot get away 
from them, by a few sharp blows they hatch the 
nut from the tree ! Through my glass I watched 
a number of them this fall, and they all worked 
in about the same way, though some of them 
wedged their nuts far into cracks or holes in the 
body of the tree, instead of in the bark. One of 
them pounded so hard he spread his tail and al- 
most upset himself. The fun was so great a 
downy woodpecker tried it, and of all the big 
school-boys ! The excitement seemed to turn his 
head, and he attacked a beechnut burr as if he 
would close with it in mortal combat ! 

Though without any real song, the nuthatch 
has a delightful variety of notes. In May his 
nasal henk-a, henJc-a, henk-a, comes through the 



104 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

soft green woods as a peculiarly peaceful caress- 
ing note, and his soft yang, yang, yang is full of 
woodsy suggestions. In the last of June I noted 
the sweet yah-ha of the nuthatch, the same yang, 
yang, yang, and his nearest approach to a song, 
the rapid yah-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha. In August and 
September the nasal yank is sometimes run into 
an accelerated half song. Thoreau gives the or- 
dinary winter note as qnah, quah, and while that 
expresses the mellowness of the note on some 
days better than yank, they are both descriptive. 
But though certain notes may predominate in 
given months, on a cold January morning I have 
heard from a flock of nuthatches every note that 
I had ever heard before at any time of the year. 
Like the other members of the quartette, the nut- 
hatch nests in holes in trees or stumps while its 
lightly spotted eggs, six or eight in number, are 
laid on a soft, f elty lining. 

I am often surprised by discovering the nut- 
hatch at work in places where I despair of finding 
any birds. One day in December the snow-cov- 
ered woods seemed to have fallen into the silent 
slumber of a child. Not a breath came to blow 
the white cap from the vireo's nest, or scatter the 
heaped-up snow that rested like foam on the slen- 
der twigs. The snow that had drifted against the 
side of the tree trunks clung as it had fallen. In 
silence the branches arched under their freight ; 
the rich ochraceous beech leaves hung in masses 
under the snow — not a leaf rustled. 



COWBIRD, 105 

Overhead the twigs, snow-outlined, made exqui- 
site filigree against the pale blue sky. But sud- 
denly, as the woods seemed to be holding its breath, 
the yank of the nuthatch came first from one tree 
and then another. A family of them were looking 
for their dinner in the white forest. If the snow 
covered the upper side of a branch, they ran along 
upside-down on the under side ; if the south side 
of a tree trunk was white, they walked, head down, 
on the north side ; and there, too, was the little 
drummer — a downy woodpecker, flickering from 
tree to tree — even here, the merry band was find- 
ing a place for itself in nature. As I passed on, 
fainter and fainter came the note of the nuthatch. 
I looked back through the woods ; the blue sky 
was veiled by snow clouds, but behind them shone 
the southern sun, pervading them with that won- 
drous radiance of white light that only a winter 
sky can show. 

XXIX. 

COWBIRD. 

The cowbird is one of the smaller blackbirds. 
The male has an iridescent body and purplish- 
brown head and neck. The female has no bril- 
liant coloring, and is decidedly dingy in appear- 
ance. 

About the size of the kingbird, the cowbird im- 



106 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

poses upon its brothers in the same systematic 
manner. It employs subtle measures, however, 
and the result of its work is much worse than that 
of the kingbird. Audubon says, " Like some un- 
natural parents of our own race, it sends out its 
progeny to be nursed." Coues says of its habits : 
" Like the European cuckoo, it builds no nest, 
laying its eggs by stealth in the nests of various 
other birds, especially warblers, vireos, and spar- 
rows ; and it appears to constitute, furthermore, 
a remarkable exception to the rule of conjugal 
affection and fidelity among birds. A wonderful 
provision for the perpetuation of the species is 
seen in its instinctive selection of smaller birds as 
the foster-parents of its offspring ; for the larger 
egg receives the greater share of warmth during 
incubation, and the lustier young cowbird asserts 
its precedence in the nest ; while the foster-birds, 
however reluctant to incubate the strange egg 
(their devices to avoid the duty are sometimes 
astonishing), become assiduous in their care of 
the foundling, even to the neglect of their own 
young. The cowbird's egg is said to hatch sooner 
than that of most birds ; this would obviously con- 
fer additional advantage." 

The birds upon which the cowbird imposes 
sometimes build a second floor to their houses 
when they find the big stranger egg in their 
home, and a case is given where even a third story 
was built. The cowbird spends a large share of 



CO WBIRD. 107 

his time among the cattle in the pastures, so earn- 
ing his name. 

With the eowbird, our pigeon-hole for " black- 
birds, orioles, etc.," No. 3,' is as full as we shall 
make- it. There are seven birds in it — the bobo- 
link, eowbird, red-winged blackbird, meadow-lark, 
crow blackbird, and oriole. Comparing them for 
a moment with the lower orders of birds we put 
away in the drawer — the chimney swift, par- 
tridge, humming-bird, cuckoo, woodpeckers, and 
kingfisher ; and then again with the other families 
of perching birds we have had — the flycatchers 
of No. 1, the finches and sparrows of No. 4, the 
barn swallow from No. 6, and the chickadee and 
nuthatch from the " nuthatches and tits " of No. 
12, we shall see how clearly they stand out as a 
group. 

Perhaps it will be well to summarize their com- 
mon characteristics. 

blackbirds, orioles, etc. (Pigeon-hole No. 3.) 

Birds that live in the meadows. 

Meadow-lark. 

Bobolink. 
Birds with much black in plumage. (Compare 
with sparrows.) 

Crow blackbird. 

Red-winged blackbird. 

Cowbird. 

Bobolink. 

Oriole. 



108 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Birds whose general build is compact but slen- 
der, and by whom the claw is used for holding- 
food. (Compare with robin and sparrows.) 

Oriole. 

Crow blackbird. 

Red-winged blackbird. 
Birds in which the females are smaller than the 
males. 

Red-winged blackbird. 

Cowbird. 

Meadow-lark. 

Crow blackbird. 
Birds with long straight bills. (Compare with 
swift, chickadee, finches, and sparrows.) 

Crow blackbird. 

Red-winged blackbird. 

Meadow-lark. 

Oriole. 
Birds that walk instead of hopping. (Compare 
with flycatchers, sparrows, etc.) 

Crow blackbird. 

Red-winged blackbird. 

Cowbird. 

Meadow-lark. 



WHITE-THROATED SPARROW. 109 

XXX. 

WHITE-THROATED SPARROW. 

Though the white-throats nest in the Adiron- 
dacks and other dense northern forest regions, they 
come to us for only about a month in spring and 
fall. In Northampton, Massachusetts, I have 
heard their clear spring whistles, — 

r r t £ i c & c i '* t 

I - I - pea -bod- dy, pea-bod- dy, pea - bod - dy 

r r r 

l p p p f f . . p 
I - I - I - pea - bod - dy, pea - bod - dy 

coming from the wooded bank of Mill River, from 
the low bushes of the fields, and the undergrowth 
of the woods on the outskirts of the city ; and in 
the fall have seen them in front of the houses 
scratching among the leaves under the evergreens 
of Round Hill. 

The first intimation I had of their return this 
fall was in the clearing one day, when I found two 
of them sitting atilt of a blackberry bush in front 
of me. As one of them sat facing me and the 
other had his back to me and only turned to look 
over his shoulder, I had a chance to note not only 
the white chin and ash-gray breast but the black 
striped chestnut back and the pretty five-striped 
crown, whose central grayish line is enclosed by 



110 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

two black lines, bounded in turn by the whitish 
line over the eyes. While I was watching them 
their attention was diverted by the barking of a 
gray squirrel in the woods, but they seemed to 
listen to him as they had me, with quiet interest, 
little more. 

A large flock of them stayed here for about a 
month, keeping always near the same spots, — a 
brush heap, an old dead tree-top, by which water 
and grain were kept for them, and a raspberry 
patch a few rods away. From the raspberry patch 
would come their quarrying note that Mr. Bick- 
nell speaks of, the peculiar chelink that gives the 
sound of a chisel slipping on stone, and which, 
when coming from a flock at a little distance, gives 
the effect of a quarry full of stone cutters. As 
I went through the patch they would fly up from 
among the bushes, some uttering a little surprised 
cliree, some calling cheep as they flew noisily by, 
while others clung, crouching close, to the side of 
a stem, looking back to see who I was. 

The small slate-colored snowbirds, the juncos, 
were with the sparrows more than any other birds ; 
but the oven-bird, whose premises they had invaded, 
looked down on them with mild curiosity until it 
was time for her to go south ; and later, a family 
of chewinks chased them off the fence by way of 
turnabout justice, though you are tempted to feel 
that the white-throats need little punishment. 
They have none of the petulance or arbitrariness 



WHITE-THROATED SPARROW. Ill 

of chippy, but with the sweet temper of the song 
sparrow, these larger cousins have a thoughtful 
bearing that harmonizes with their spring song, 
which is tinged with sadness, like the melodious 
call of 'the bluebird. 

One morning in September, not finding the 
white-throats in the raspberry-patch, I went on to 
a circular opening near the edge of the woods just 
south of it. The sunlight streaming down through 
the half Indian summer haze and melting into the 
soft lights and shadows of the surrounding green 
woods, gave a mystic loveliness to the spot. A 
delicate white birch stretched up, sunning itself ; 
a maple trunk stood in shadow with one spray of 
a drooping branch dipped in the emerald sun dye ; 
the red autumn leaves lodged here and there 
seemed to be shaken out of sight by the green 
bushes, but a breath of fresh wind murmured that 
summer was past and — was it a footstep ? No ! 
It was an army of little autumn pedestrians ! A 
happy host of white-throated sparrows, hopping 
about on the ground under the bushes. Busy and 
fearless, their footsteps pattered on the leaves, and 
they sometimes came within two or three feet of 
me without taking fright. A chipmunk scudded 
through the bushes after his playfellow without 
startling them. From every side came the happy 
chee-ree ; a cobweb shimmered in the sunlight. 
What if fall were coming ? It brought these little 
friends of ours ! 



112 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XXXI. 

CEDAR-BIRD ; WAXWING. 

The cedar-birds go into pigeon-hole No. 7, the 
place for "the waxwings," etc., and when you 
have examined them you will feel that they de- 
serve a cubby-hole of their own. In spring and 
fall they are found in flocks, often of five or seven, 
but you will be likely to overlook them if you are 
not consciously watching the birds. They are 
rather shy, and are slender birds, a little smaller 
than a robin, with inconspicuous coloring, and, 
moreover, have no song to attract your attention, 

— nothing but a lisping note and a faint whis- 
tle that sounds as if they were drawing in their 
breath. But they are about, and in June will 
probably nest in the nearest orchard, and eat 
canker-worms from the village trees. 

When you find them you will be repaid for your 
trouble. By the law of compensation, discussed 
by Darwin under the head of Natural Selection, 
their beauty makes up for their lack of voice, 
while, in the case of the sparrows, plainness is 
compensated by musical power. 

The waxwing's plumage is a soft fawn tone, lit 
up by touches of color. Its crest is fawn, but it 
has a black chin and a black stripe through the 
eye, a yellow band across the end of its tail, and, 

— most unique external feature of all, which ex- 



CEDAR-BIRD. 113 

plains the name waxwing — a tipping of a bright 
red horny substance that looks like sealing-wax 
on the shorter feathers of its wings, and some- 
times the feathers of the tail. How prettily the 
tipping* lights up its dainty coat ! It gives the 
final touches to an artistic costume. But what 
impresses you most at first sight is the waxwing' s 
crest, and the fact that, unlike the fluffy chicka- 
dee, every delicately tinted feather of its shapely 
body is smoothed into place with exquisite care. 
The waxwings are the elite of bird circles, and 
seem fit companions for the proud oriole and the 
graceful catbird. But how modest and retiring 
they seem as they hide away among the leaves, 
silent and self-contained, while the handsome oriole 
flaunts his scarlet banner through the air, blowing 
a bugle-note for all the world to hear ; and the 
gay Bohemian catbird chuckles at his own jokes, 
and tells the lilacs all he knows as he idles in the 
sunshine. 

Nuttall relates a curious instance of politeness 
which he noticed among cedar-birds. One, hav- 
ing caught an insect, gave it to his neighbor, who 
took it to give to another, he in turn passing it on, 
till it had gone the rounds of the group before it 
was devoured ! 

The gentle affectionate nature of the cedar-bird 
has often been commented upon, and naturalists 
have called attention to the fact that the pretty 
little birds have even adopted the human symbol 



114 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

of tenderness, and are often seen kissing each 
other. Gumpei Kuwada, the young Japanese ob- 
server at Northampton, Massachusetts, has sent 
me some interesting notes on the subject. He 
says : " On the 7th of May I saw a very large 
flock of cedar-birds, Ampdis cedrorum. Two of 
these were seated on a branch a little distance 
apart, and one hopped toward the other and bent 
down his head and touched the bill of the other 
with his own bill, then went back to his place ; 
then the second bird went to the first bird and 
went through the same motions and returned to 
his place ; then the first bird repeated the per- 
formance, and so these two cedar-birds went alter- 
nately and touched each other's bills for about 
five minutes. The action of the two birds was so 
funny that I could not call it anything else but 
that they fell in love and kissed each other. It 
could not possibly have been a mother feeding 
her young, because it was so early in the season, 
and they were in a flock and had nothing in their 
bills, and their bills were shut." 

The cedar -birds are not only affectionate in 
their own families, but sometimes show the most 
human compassion to stranger birds. Mrs. 
Martha D. Jones, of Northampton, writes me of 
a touching instance of their friendliness. She 
says : " Last summer my sister watched for weeks 
a robin's nest in an apple-tree some ten feet from 
her chamber window. She could see into the nest, 



CHE WINK. 115 

and day by day watched the maturing of love and 
hope and faith till the little ones were fledged. 
Then came a sad day when the mother bird was 
killed, and again a sadder still when the sole pro- 
vider of the hungry brood was taken. Who 
should provide for the four little gaping mouths ? 
Must the little ones perish also? Their pitiful 
cries could be heard in the house, and my sister 
tried to devise some way to reach the nest and 
relieve them. When lo! she was anticipated. 
The young had been heard, and a pitiful heart 
had responded. ... A cedar -bird came before 
the day closed and adopted them, fed them con- 
stantly for more than a week; brought them 
safely from the nest and taught them to fly as 
though they had been her own." What an ex- 
ample these birds could set the kingbird and 
least flycatcher ! 

XXXII. 

CHEWINK ; TOWHEE. 

The sight of a chewink, even in migration, is 
a rare pleasure in the Adirondack region. One 
October morning when the orchard trees and 
evergreens are astir with sparrows, a big umber- 
brown bird comes out from the low branches of a 
Norway spruce, and, showing white tail feathers 
as she flies, hides away among the low spreading 



116 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

branches of a white birch. Just as I begin to 
question my eyes, she flies into a plum-tree and I 
recognize the small brown head, the short finch 
bill, — for she belongs in pigeon-hole No. 4, — and 
the white triangular corners of the chewink tail. 




But on the instant she spies me, and away she flies, 
low over the ground to — I never know where. 
Had she clapped on a magic cap she could not 
have vanished more completely. I waste the best 
part of the morning hunting for her, and the next 
day begin the search again. 

Going along a narrow trail that serves as snow- 
shoe path in winter, in passing a dead tree top I 
start the usual number of white-throats, and as I 
turn the corner of the fence into the clearing — be- 
hold ! — right before me, clinging to the side of a 



CHE WINK. 117 

raspberry stem and looking at me over his shoul- 
der, is a handsome male chewink. What a beauty ! 
His back is black and his sides match the crisp 
curled beech leaves that color the wood paths in 
fall. He whisks his tail back and forth, and opens 
and shuts it as a nervous beauty toys with her fan, 
so disclosing the white feathers that border it and 
the white triangles on the corners. But before I 
can put pencil to note-book he has disappeared. I 
spy about in all directions, get down on my knees 
to peer through the raspberry bushes, and tiptoe 
along, ogling all the white-throats that light on the 
fence — but never a glimpse do I get of him. 

Then suddenly he appears on top of a fence 
facing me ; but as I look down he hops among 
the ferns, and as I screen myself behind a tree 
for a better view when he shall fly up again, a low 
cheree-ah-ree reaches me, and I see him on the 
fence several rods away! He looks up to the 
trees, raising and lowering his cap, with the odd 
effect of rounding or flattening his head, and then, 
deciding in favor of brambles, jumps off into the 
bushes again. 

And so I follow him for three or four hours, 
trying every device to keep near without letting 
him take fright, stepping on moss or walking 
along the trunks of fallen trees to avoid the crack- 
ling sound of the leaves, stopping to listen for his 
soft cheree-ah-ree, getting down to look through 
the bare stems of the bushes for him, and, if I see 



118 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

him as he scratches among the leaves, crouch 
motionless close to the ground till I am as full of 
cramps as Caliban. Once, seeinj him on the 
fence, I stand close to a tree and take an old dry 
golden-rod — curious freak it is too, with axillary 
flowers all the way up the stem - — and hang it 
from a twig in front of me as a screen and in that 
way get a good look at him through my glass. 

Off his guard, he loses the alert nervous manner 
noticed at first, and seems winningly peaceful and 
social — but just as I am allowing him all the 
virtues of the decalogue, he flies at a white-throat 
that presumes to light on the fence, and drives it 
off in a temper ! 

I next find both Mr. and Mrs. Chewink by the 
corner of the fence where grain and water are 
kept for the birds, and when Mr. Chewink is not 
chasing after white-throats, they busy themselves 
hunting among the leaves. Near by a partridge 
sits motionless on a limb, so close to a tree she 
seems part of it. So much for being in the land- 
scape! I take Madam Partridge's hint, and 
perch myself on the fence with my back to a tree 
that stands by it ; and, thanks to the device, when 
Mr. Chewink comes, after hopping about uncon- 
sciously just in range of my glass, he flies up on 
an arching blackberry stem only a few feet from 
me and sings softly to himself for several minutes 
without ever noticing me ! 

After about a week a storm came that drove 



INDIGO-BIRD. 119 

the chewinks south, and I searched through the 
raspberry patch and wandered through the woods 
calling to them in vain. But one day after the 
middle of the month I found another male eating 
the grain. He scratched among the leaves in full 
view, running at them with a queer energetic mo- 
tion, tossing them up behind him. I had a long 
conversation with him, but though he answered 
all my remarks in a very friendly way, he looked 
cold, and talked in rather a pensive strain, and I 
saw no more of the family that fall. 

XXXIII. 

INDIGO-BIKD. 

In a paper in the " Audubon Magazine," Mr. 
Ridgway has shown what a mistake has been 
made in depreciating our American songsters. 
With equal justice an article might be written, 
calling attention to the brilliant plumages of many 
of our northern birds. The purple grackle, ori- 
ole, bluebird, goldfinch, humming-bird, barn swal- 
low, blue jay, purple finch, scarlet tanager, red- 
headed woodpecker, yellow - throated vireo, and 
numbers of our warblers would excite wondering 
delight if they should bear South American or 
European labels. Indeed, among birds as among 
roadside flowers, we need to make it the fashion 
to appreciate our own national gallery of beauties. 



120 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Not the least of our most brilliant every-day 
songsters is the indigo-bird. Only in a poor light 
is he as dull as common indigo. In the sunlight 
his coat is an intense, exquisite blue, the shade of 
which varies as he moves, and is described by 
Thoreau as " glowing indigo." Mrs. Indigo has 
a pretty tinge of blue on her shoulders and tail 
feathers, but if the light is not right to bring this 
out, the peculiarly warm brown, which is almost 
burnt sienna, is enough to distinguish her from 
the ordinary brown birds that are like her in size 
and build. Her habit of jerking her tail from 
side to side is also diagnostic. 

The indigo-bird is one of our most energetic, 
tireless songsters. He is usually seen on the top 
of a bush or a tree not more than twenty or thirty 
feet high ; often in the edge of the woods, or in a 
clump of bushes beside the road, and sometimes 
in the garden, where his breezy, sunny song shows 
that he is making the most of all the light and 
air that are to be had. Blithe and merry in the 
sunshine, he sings as loudly through the noonday 
heat as in the cooler hours. 

His roundelay has been syllabified in various 
ways, but the rhythm and tone may be suggested 
by che-ree r che-ree' che-ree f che-ree f che-rah! rah- 
rup r . The last half varies greatly, sometimes 
being che-rah! rah-ah-rup, or che-rah! che-rip! 
cherup'. Very often the song ends with an inde- 
scribable, rapid flourish of confused notes. 



INDIGO-BIRD. 121 

This June a pair of indigo-birds built in the 
edge of the woods only a few rods from the house, 
but I think they never ceased to regret their 
temerity. The nest was a pretty little bunch of 
dry leaves and grass, and its deep, narrow cavity 
was lined with hair. It was wedged into the fork 
of a- tiny beech, only six inches from the ground, 
and not more than three feet from the carriage 
drive. The mother would sit quietly when wag- 
ons passed, but as soon as she found that I had dis- 
covered her nest would fly off in distress whenever 
I happened to be walking by. Unlike goldfinches 
and sparrows, the mother never got used to me, 
and to the last suspected me of — I don't know 
what murderous intentions — darting off into the 
low bushes with her metallic cheep, cheep, as soon 
as she caught sight of me, and almost refusing to 
feed her babies till I had gone back to the house. 
Her husband, though somewhat suspicious, could 
not share her alarm ; he chirped and jerked his 
tail about, but his anxiety had a perfunctory air. 

Earlier in the season I saw a very marked in- 
stance of this difference in temperament. I was 
walking through the edge of a clearing when I 
scared up a mother indigo-bird, apparently look- 
ing for a good site for her nest. She was much 
excited, and twitched her tail as she flew about 
crying cheep, cheep. She made so much noise 
that her husband heard her, and came flying home 
to rescue her. He did not think either my dogs or 



122 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

I looked belligerent, but followed her from limb 
to limb to be near if we should attack her. It 
was evident that he did not sympathize with her 
fears, as he neither cried out nor jerked his tail ; 
and after he had chased her patiently all over the 
branches, from one tree to another, and through 
the bushes, at last he turned toward her on a 
branch and looked at her as much as to say, — 

" Oh ! you tiresome creature ; why will you be 
so absurd ? Don't you see they 're not going to 
hurt you?" 

His contempt had no effect, however, and — he 
opened his mouth at her ! This threat of conju- 
gal authority subdued her, and at last she meekly 
flew off into the woods with him. But, like some 
other good wives, she had her way in the end, 
and though she followed Mr. Indigo back there 
several times to look for " empty lots," two or 
three more scares determined her, and the nest 
was built elsewhere ! 



XXXIV. 

PURPLE FINCH. 

The purple finch is about the size of his cousin 
the song sparrow. He is as fond of singing in a 
maple or an evergreen as chippy is of trilling on 
the lawn, and the result is much more satisfac- 
tory, although he does not sing as well as the song 
sparrow. 



PURPLE FINCH. 123 

Now and then you catch a sweet liquid note, 
but for the most part his song is only a bright 
warble, without beginning or end. The song 
sparrow, you know, begins, strikes his upper note 
three times, and then runs down the scale, finish- 
ing off usually with a little flourish ; but the pur- 
ple finch seems to sing in circles, without much 
musical sense — nothing but a general feeling 
that the sun is warm and bright, and there are 
plenty of buds and seeds to be found near by. 
Thoreau puts the song in syllables as — a-twitter- 
witter-witter-wee, a-witter-witter-icee. 

The song is at its best when our pretty finch is 
in love. Then it has more expression and sweet- 
ness and resembles the whisper song of the robin. 
And when he bows and dances before the little 
brown lady he is trying to win for his bride, his 
pretty magenta head and back, his rosy throat 
and white breast, with his graceful ways and ten- 
der song, make him an attractive suitor. The 
brown-streaked, sparrowy-looking little creature 
who seems to ignore him at first, can scarcely help 
feeling flattered by the devotion of such a hand- 
some cavalier, and you feel sure that his wooing 
will come to a happy end. 

Like the waxwings, bobolinks, white-throated 
sparrows, blue jays, goldfinches, and swifts, ex- 
cept in the nesting season, the purple finches are 
generally found in flocks, their favorite haunts 
being woods and orchards. 



124 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XXXV. 

RED-EYED VIREO. 

Among the songs that come through the open 
window in summer, there is one I hear when the 
midday heat has silenced nearly all the others. It 
comes from the upper branches of the trees about 
the house, and is a preoccupied warble of three 
loud, guttural notes, given with monotonous va- 
riety. In rhythm it is something like he-ha-ivha 
or ha-ha-wha, or, again, he-lia-whip in rising in- 
flection, and he-ha-whee in falling cadence. 

If I go out and focus my glass on the dull- 
colored bird that moves along over the branches 
inspecting the leaves in such a business-like way, I 
discover it to be an exquisite little creature, tinted 
more delicately than the waxwing, but with much 
the same glossy look and elegant air. It is a 
slender bird, about half as large as a robin. Its 
back is olive, and its breast white, of such tints 
that when the sunlight is on the leaves our vireo 
is well disguised, for its back looks like the upper 
side of the leaf, and its breast like the under side 
with the sun on it. If the bird considerately flies 
down into the lower branches, as it turns its head 
to one side, I can make out its ash-colored cap 
and the lines that border it, — first a black one, 
then a white, and below that another black line, 
running through the eye. 



RED-EYED VIREO. 125 

If its search among the lower branches is suc- 
cessful it runs along the length of a limb, holding 
its worm out at bill's length, shaking it over the 
limb as if afraid of dropping it before it is in con- 
dition to swallow. 

But although one becomes attached to the cheery 
bird that sings at its work from morning till night, 
in park and common, as well as about the country 
house, the best way to know it is to follow one of 
the family into the edge of the woods where it 
builds its nest. 

Such an exquisite little workman as you discover 
it to be ! It wonders how the meadow-lark and 
bobolink can like to nest on the damp ground, and 
how the woodpeckers can live in a tree trunk, — 
how can they ever keep their babies quiet without 
a cradle ! The coarse mud-plastered house of the 
robin fills it with lofty surprise. For its part it 
usually chooses a lithe sapling that responds to all 
the caprices of the wind, and from the fork of one 
of its twigs hangs a dainty birch-bark basket. 

For lining it picks up leaf-bud cases, curving 
stems of the maple seeds, — wings the children 
call them, — and now and then a spray of hem- 
lock. With the artist's instinct it puts the strips 
of brown bark next the lining, and keeps the shin- 
ing silvery bits for the outside. Sometimes it 
puts in pieces of white, crisp, last year's leaves, 
and often steals the side of a small wasp's nest to 
weave in with the rest, while bits of white cob- 



126 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

web-like substance that look as if taken from co- 
coons are fastened on for ornament. 

What could you have more daintily pretty? 
Nothing after the four white, delicately wreathed 
oval eggs are laid on the maple wing stems in the 
bottom. 

On such a nest as this, with the tender green 
leaves to shield her from stray sunbeams, and the 
wind to rock her gently back and forth, brooding 
must lose some of its wearisome monotony ; and 
you are tempted to account for the difference be- 
tween the nervousness of some bird mothers and 
the contented trustfulness of the vireo. 

One day I accidentally surprised a vireo on her 
nest. Here was a chance to see her red eyes. I 
leveled my glasses at them and stared with the in- 
sistent curiosity of an enthusiast. Nearer and 
nearer I crept, and actually got within two feet of 
the tree before she stirred. Then she flew off 
with only a mildly complaining whee-ough, and 
sat down in a tree near by to see what I would do 
next. But just then I espied a wasp's nest about 
two feet over hers, and not waiting to see if it was 
"to let," retreated, wondering at the proximity. 

There were a number of vireo families that I 
was watching last spring, and one of them built 
so low that by pulling down the end of the branch 
I could reach into the nest. One day when I 
went to examine the eggs they had turned into a 
family of such big yellow-throated youngsters that 
they filled the nest. 



RED-EYED YIREO. 127 

The mother did not seem to be there, so I sat 
down with my dogs near by to wait for her. I 
supposed she was off worm-hunting and would fly 
back in great excitement on discovering the in- 
truders. But all at once, almost over my head, I 
heard a low, crooning whee-ah ! I turned in sur- 
prise, and there was my mother bird looking down 
at me with all the composure of an old friend. 
Wha-icha-icha, she said, as she saw the dogs and 
took in the group again. As we kept still, and 
did not offer to molest her children, she soon be- 
gan looking about for worms, saying ter-ter-eater 
in the most complacent tone as she worked. She 
would turn her head and look down at us now and 
then with mild curiosity ; but although I went 
back to the nest to test her she seemed to have 
perfect confidence in me, not showing the least 
alarm. 

Afterward I heard the vireo song from her. and 
concluded that she was the father of the family, 
left on guard while the mother was taking her 
rest. I thought perhaps that accounted for some 
of the indifference, but after that, when I went to 
see them, I found both old birds, and always met 
with the same trustfulness. Indeed, they would 
talk to me in the most friendly manner, answering 
my broken bird talk with gentle sympathetic seri- 
ousness that said very plainly they knew I meant 
well, and what a sweet winsome sound it had, 
uttered in their low caressing tones ! 



128 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

To their enemies, however, these beautiful birds 
are neither gentle nor confiding. Last June, as I 
was watching a chestnut-sided warbler from the 
undergrowth near a vireo's nest, I heard a great 
commotion among the thrushes and vireos, and 
hurried out of the cover to see what was the trouble. 
I heard a low complaining croon from one of the 
vireos, and looking up saw, to my surprise, a 
gray screech owl flying blindly about among the 
branches. After a little he stumbled upon a dead 
limb and sat down, trying to feel at home. But 
the vireos were crying ominously kvay, kree-kree- 
Icree-ltree, and when he thought how they had 
darted down and snapped their bills at him as he 
came along, he edged uneasily over the branch. 
Just then my dog came running noisily through 
the dead leaves under the tree. What could be 
coming next ! The scared, awkward owl turned 
his head over to one side and strained his big eyes 
to see. His ears stood up, and his pupils grew 
bigger and bigger with fright. He looked like a 
great booby entrapped by a practical joke. But 
this was too serious. What with a dozen vireos 
and thrushes threatening him, some wild animal 
or other rushing about at the foot of the tree, — 
and the pair of big glass eyes almost as large as 
his own, through which another mysterious object 
was menacing him. No owl could bear it ! Away 
he flew, as fast as his blundering wings could flap, 
followed by the angry vireos, who saw him well 



YELLOW-THROATED VIREO. 129 

out of their neighborhood before they let him 
alone. 

The next day I scared up the foolish fellow 
again, in the same place, and found that the near- 
est vireo's nest was gone ! Not a trace was left, 
nothing but one feather ! Had he taken his re- 
venge in the night? The trees refused to tell 
tales, and I had to be satisfied with giving him 
such a scare as would keep him away in future. 



XXXVI. 

YELLOW-THROATED VIREO. 

The name of this beautiful bird calls up college 
days, for my first memory of him is a picture of 
one of the fairest May mornings upon which a 
Connecticut Valley sun ever rose. 

Dandelions were just beginning to dot the ten- 
der grass, and the air was full of busy travellers 
stopping on their northward journey to see the 
beautiful old New England town that the bird- 
voiced Jenny Lind christened the " paradise of 
America." Eager for a sight of the strangers, I 
hid myself under the spreading boughs of an old 
apple-tree in the corner of an orchard and waited 
to see what would come. 

A purple finch was now gathering materials for 
her nest where she had been coquetting with her 
handsome lover not long before, and the catbird 



130 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

who lived across the road by the bank of Mill 
River had flown over to talk with the visitors ; 
while above the rest full and rich came the son£ 
of the handsome rose-breasted grosbeak. My 
cover was a happy thought. Right into the tree 
over my head came the birds, so busy flitting 
about the leaves they had little time to look under 
the branches. And most beautiful of all — though 
a rainbow of warblers came before I left — was 
this dainty, golden-throated vireo. 

Less restless than the warblers, he inspected the 
boughs more thoroughly, giving me at intervals 
glimpses of his olive back, white wing bars, and 
bright yellow chin and throat as well as his pretty 
yellow breast that turns to white below. Whe-he- 
he, he sang out as he worked, and I suspect his 
sharp eyes detected me when he turned his head 
on one side and peered through the leaves. 

How delighted I was to discover, a few weeks 
later, that he or one of his brothers had gone to 
housekeeping on the campus ! The nest was the 
first vireo basket I had ever seen, and I well re- 
member the enthusiasm it excited in the other 
college girls. We would go out after breakfast, 
wade through the damp grass to the maple from 
which it hung, and stand looking up at it, admir- 
ing the bits of white trimming fastened on at reg- 
ular intervals along the sides, and exclaiming at 
the beauty of the architect watching us from among 
the leaves, until, at last, the tolling of the chapel 
bell would send us hurrying back up the hill. 



WARBLING VIREO. 131 

XXXVII. 

WARBLING VIREO. 

The warbling is the smallest of the three vireos. 
Its back is grayish olive, and its breast is tinged 
with yellow. It may be distinguished from the 
others by his song. 

Dr. Brewer says : " This vireo ... is to a 
large extent a resident of villages, towns, and 
even cities. It is by far the sweetest singer that 
ventures within their crowded streets and public 
squares, . . . and the melody of its song is ex- 
quisitely soft and beautiful. It is chiefly to be 
found among the tall trees, in the vicinity of dwell- 
ings, where it seems to delight to stay, and from 
their highest tops to suspend its pensile nest. It 
is especially abundant among the elms on Boston 
Common." 

By reason of their dainty coats and shapely forms, 
their pretty ways and their repose of manner, the 
vireos remind one most forcibly of the waxwings. 

Birds naturally group themselves by occupation, 
and, as a Darwinian corollary, by coloring. The 
sparrows spend most of their time on the ground 
searching for seeds, and are protected by their 
earth-colored suits ; the woodpeckers live clinging 
to tree trunks, and many of them are disguised by 
their likeness to the bark ; the flycatchers take 
their living from the insects that swarm in the 



132 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

air, and their dull colors serve as non-conductors 
of attention ; while the vireos, who live on measure- 
worms and similar morsels, are so exclusively de- 
voted to foliage that they might well be called 
leaf-birds, and their tints harmonize strikingly 
with their habits. They may well be known as 
" greenlets." 

XXXVIII. 

oven-bird; golden-crowned thrush. 

We have had the loud rattling trill of the yel- 
low hammer, the alarm of the kingfisher, and the 
fine, shrill trill of the chipping sparrow, but now 
we come to one that differs from them all. Mr. 
Burroughs has aptly described it by the word 
teach-er. It seems to beat upon the air, growing- 
louder and louder, increasing in intensity, volume, 
and rapidity until the end, like 

f f ' I I 5 P I V 
I " k v vf K V K 

^ " B ■ 

teach-er, teach-er, teach-er, teach-er, teacher 

Ordinarily the trill is your clue in looking for 
the oven-bird. When you hear it close at hand, 
and fail to see him on a tree, look carefully under 
the bushes on the ground. If you see a bird the 
size of the white - throated sparrow, tossing the 
dead leaves aside with his bill and scratching them 



OVEN-BIRD. 133 

up, less like a chewink than like a hen, you have 
probably found your friend. 

His olive-green back makes him inconspicuous 
when he is among the leaves, and the thick brown 
spotting on his white breast serves as a disguise 
when he is on the ground. If you are fortunate 
you will discover his orange-brown crown, enclosed 
by two black stripes that converge toward the 
bill. 

Like the partridge, the crow, the blackbirds, 
and the meadow-lark, the oven-bird is a walker, so 
that you can distinguish him at a glance merely 
by his leisurely dignified gait, — it is such a con- 
trast to the hopping of the chewinks and spar- 
rows. 

The leaf -house from which the oven-bird gets 
his name varies in its roofing, but the first nest I 
ever found may be taken as a type of the com- 
monest style of architecture. It was a bright morn- 
ing in June, and while walking through the edge 
of a grove of young maples a brown shadow started 
up from under my feet and disappeared in the 
woods. On looking down beside a blooming Solo- 
mon's seal, I saw what at first glance seemed to 
be a bunch of dry leaves, — one of the thousand 
pushed up by mice or crowding spring flowers. 
But the hint given by the fleeting shadow could 
not be ignored, and I stooped down to examine 
the bunch. I felt it over eagerly, — one, two, 
three sides, no opening ; the fourth, my fingers 



134 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

slipped in, — it was the unique oven-bird's nest I 
had been hoping to find ever since I was a child. 

In an instant I was on hands and knees peering 
through the mysterious doorway. How interest- 
ing ! There lay five exquisite eggs, their irregu- 
lar brown speckles centring in a crown about the 
larger end. What a wonderful builder the little 
creature seemed ! His arched roof was lined so 
smoothly with soft dry leaves it suggested a fret- 
work ceiling. What a tiny palace of beauty had 
this golden-crowned queen of the thrushes ! What 
mystery that bunch of leaves held ! The little 
brown lady might have been sitting at the mouth 
of a fairy cave. 

The next day I found three of the eggs hatched, 
and such absurd -looking nestlings had well been 
taken for bird gnomes. They seemed all mouth 
and eyeball ! Small red appendages answered 
for wings, and tufts of gray down on the skin did 
for a coat of feathers. Even when feebly throw- 
ing up their heads and opening their big yellow 
throats for worms, the birds' eyes were closed so 
fast they had an uncanny appearance. The same 
day I had the good fortune to stumble upon an- 
other nest. This was essentially the same, though 
built more of fine roots. 

The ingenuity of the builders is shown by a 
device which puzzled me greatly in my first nest. 
I made several visits to it, and when the little 
ones had flown, found that the grass around the 



OVEN-BIRD. 



135 



mouth of the nest had been pulled together, so as 
to leave only a round hole just large enough for 
the bird to go in and out. For some time I was 
at a loss to account for it, but I had noticed from 
the outset that this bird acted peculiarly. On 




none of my visits had she uttered a note or come 
near me, while the other mother oven-birds always 
began smacking their bills and flying hither and 
thither the instant I appeared. Perhaps this 
mother was more thoughtful than the others, and 
considering their clatter dangerous, went to the 
other extreme. 

The most terrified oven-bird that I have ever 
seen I found on a densely wooded hillside in the 
same woods. She began her smacking as soon as 
we came in sight, but although we hunted care- 
fully for the nest we could not find a trace of it. 
We sat down on a log and waited for her to show 



136 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

it to us, but that did no good. She did confine 
herself to a radius of about three rods, but select- 
ing saplings at extreme points flew from one to 
the other as she inspected us, all the while wag- 
ging her tail nervously up and down and keeping 
up the monotonous smacking. 

Finding her as incorrigible as the mosquitoes, 
and realizing the approach of the dinner hour, 
my friend and I set out for home. But in our 
case the gods favored the cowardly, for, as we 
were brandishing our maple twigs in the faces of 
pursuing punkies and mosquitoes, we suddenly 
started up the little family we had been hunting 
for. 

They ran out from the leaves under our feet, 
scudding off in all directions. My two dogs 
pounced after them, and we flew in terror after 
the dogs, but Balder's big jaws had nearly en- 
gulfed them before we had dragged him off. In 
the midst of the confusion the terrified mother flew 
to the ground and began trailing in a pitifully 
excited way. She spread out her wings and tail, 
dragging them along the earth as if helpless. On 
finding that we would not accept that decoy, and 
seeing that her little ones had hidden away under 
the leaves, she tried another plan and walked once 
slowly back and forth for about a rod on the 
side away from her young. Having, as she sup- 
posed, completely diverted our attention by these 
imaginative ruses, as the dogs were perfectly 



OVEN-BIRD. 137 

quiet, and we had not moved since the first alarm, 
she made a detour and risked an examination of 
the place where the little birds had disappeared. 

In watching the oven-bird I have been surprised 
to find how irregular individuals are in their time 
of nesting. On June 11 I found a family of full- 
grown young being fed in the branches of a ma- 
ple-tree. The same day I found a nest full of 
eggs. June 12 three of these eggs hatched, and 
I found a nest of young a quarter grown. June 
13 I found the family that I have just described 
well out of their nest. These could hardly have 
been first and second broods, as they were in all 
stages of development. This same difference I 
have since found in the nesting of robins, vireos, 
chipping birds, song sparrows and others. 

When I considered myself well acquainted 
with the oven-bird and its notes, I was much sur- 
prised to be told that it had a beautiful song dis- 
tinct from the usual trill. The trill seems to be 
used for all its commonplace thoughts and feel- 
ings, but, as Mr. Bicknell says, " on occasion, as 
if sudden emotion carried it beyond the restric- 
tions that ordinarily beset its expression, it bursts 
forth with a wild outpouring of intricate and 
melodious song. This song is produced on the 
wing, oftenest when the spell of evening is com- 
ing over the woods. Sometimes it may be heard 
as an outburst of vesper melody carried above the 
foliage of the shadowy forest and descending and 
dying away with the waning twilight." 



138 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Mr. Bicknell speaks only of the two songs, but 
I have heard the two combined. The outbreak 
of high, rapid, confused notes being interlarded 
with the low-pitched conversational trilling teach- 
er, teach f er. By increasing the confusion, this 
adds greatly to the effect of excitement spoken of 
by Mr. Bicknell. Though most common at even- 
ing or in the night, I have frequently heard this 
medley in both morning and afternoon. The 
rhythm and volume of this interesting song in its 
simplest form may be suggested by the syllables 
whee r he, whee ! he, whee f ha, he ! he f ha, increasing 
in volume toward the middle, and unlike the or- 
dinary trill, diminishing in intensity again at the 
close. 

XXXIX. 

JUNCO; SLATE-COLORED SNOWBIRD. 

Early in September you may have found the 
juncos, companies of little gray-robed monks and 
nuns, just emerging from the forests where they 
cloister during the summer months. Most of 
them nest well to the north, but still there are 
many that content themselves with the cool moun- 
tain ranges of the Alleghanies. 

If they build in your locality, as they do here, 
their habits, like those of the chickadee, are 
greatly changed in summer, and you will take 
more than one casual walk through the woods be- 



junco. 139 

fore you discover them. They are no longer in 
flocks, but in pairs, and I consider myself fortu- 
nate if I get a timid look from one from among 
the dead branches of a fallen tree top. 

Early last May I was delighted to see a pair 
on the edge of the raspberry patch, but though 
they inspected the recesses of a pile of brush, 
seemed greatly interested in the nooks and cran- 
nies of an upturned root, and reviewed the attrac- 
tions of a pretty young hemlock that stood in a 
moss-grown swamp on the border of the patch, I 
suspect it was only a feint ; and when they came 
to the grave business of house choosing they fol- 
lowed family traditions and built under a stump, 
in a hole beneath the root of a tree, under an 
overhanging bank, or somewhere else on the 
ground, with a natural roof to keep off the rain. 

At all events, they left the raspberry patch, 
and with the exception of one or two that I heard 
giving their high-keyed woodsy trill in June, that 
was the last time I saw any of the family there 
until fall. Then they came out in time to meet 
their cousins the white-throats, and stayed till 
after the first snows. 

Like the sparrows, waxwings, blackbirds, swal- 
lows, blue jays, swifts, and others, the juncos live 
in flocks when not nesting. One day in Septem- 
ber I found a number of them gathered around 
an old barn, some sitting quietly on the boards 
and sticks that lay on the ground, and others, as 



140 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

becomes inhabitants of No. 4, hopping about pick- 
ing up seeds. 

Another day they and some white-throats were 
by the side of the barn eating grain scattered at 
the threshing. Not content with what they could 
find there, some of them flew up on the sill of a 
small window, hopped along, and actually disap- 
peared in the dark barn. 

As the weather grew colder they came, as they 
do every spring and fall, to see what they could 
find to eat by the side of the house. Here, where 
they find only friends, they raise their heads with 
quiet curiosity when you approach, and seem 
notably gentle, trustful birds ; but it is said that 
they show much caution as well as intelligence in 
eluding their enemies, and are among the most 
difficult birds to snare. 



XL. 

KINGLETS. 

Do you know these dainty little birds that visit 
us twice a year ? Some bright September morn- 
ing you wake up and find them flitting about the 
apple-trees, and know that fall has come. But 
they tell you the fact in such a breezy, cheery way 
that you remember only how glad you are to see 
them. In April they are back just long enough 
to sing out " How do you do ? " and then are off 
for the north so that summer shan't catch them. 



KINGLETS. 141 

How do they look ? Well, they are fluffy little 
things with grayish olive coats and whitish vests 
that protect them as they flit about the leaves as 
perfectly as the vireo's suits. That is the way I 
thought of them when I had only a vague idea 
that one of the family had a golden crest, and the 
other wore a ruby crown. But one fall, when 
they came back to the old thorn-apple by the 
garden, I thought I would learn to know the 
cousins apart. 

That morning one little fellow had the tree all 
to himself. And what a queer gnome he was ! A 
fat ball of feathers, stilted up on long, wiry legs, 
with eyes that, though set oddly enough far back 
from his bill, were yet so near together they seemed 
to prevent his seeing straight ahead. He would 
flash one eye on me, and then jerk himself round 
and flash the other, scolding in the funniest way 
with his fine chatter. I could not see that he had 
any crown at all, and so was as much puzzled as 
ever to decide which kinglet he was. 

He and his friends were here by themselves 
about two weeks, working industriously all the 
while — dear little brownies — to clear our' moun- 
tain ashes and apple-trees of insects before leaving 
us. I came to know them as far off as I could 
see them by their restless bluebird way of lifting 
their wings and twinkling them in the air as they 
hunted through the branches. And how they did 
hunt! As the kinglets live among the leaves, 



142 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

they adopt the tints of the vireos, though they are 
as little like them as the fluffy chickadee is like 
the waxwing in build or temperament. The vireos 
walk sedately down the length of a branch, calmly 
turning their heads on one side to peer under the 
leaves for their measure-worm ; but the kinglets ! 

— clambering up a limb, turning from one side 
to the other, with one big eye always close to the 
bark staring for insects ; fluttering under a twig 
like a humming-bird, and then catching hold up- 
side down to pick off an insect ; flitting about 
from branch to branch; stopping a moment to 
eye me inquisitively, and then hurrying on with 
their work — the restless pigmies seemed most 
unvireo like. 

At the end of two weeks I had seen no kinglet 
crown of any kind. But one day I had a surprise. 
Hearing a faint note from a Norway spruce I 
looked up and saw a kinglet, but — what was it ? 
Instead of being one of my gnomes, he was the 
most human, every -day sort of a bird, with a 
naive interrogative air that might have argued 
him an American. Then his tiny, stubby bill 
stuck out from his big head with such a pert, 
business-like air it gave my idea of kinglets an- 
other shock. What was he ? Could I have been 
wholly mistaken ? Was my elf no kinglet at all 

— was this the kinglet ? Such a crown ! I had 
comforted myself for my gnome's lack of crown 
by thinking that it was concealed like the king- 



KINGLETS. 143 

bird's, but here, — how could such a crown as this 
ever have been hidden? Why, the black lines 
came way down to his absurd little bill, and the 
gold between them was plain enough to be seen 
almost as far off as the bird himself. 

I came in bewildered enough, but the moment 
I saw DeKay's plates I understood it all. This 
was the golden-crowned, and my pigmies were the 
ruby-crowned kinglets. After that the two kinds 
were here in great numbers for two weeks, and 
before the rubies left I surprised one of them into 
showing his beautiful scarlet crown. The ruby- 
crowns went as they had come, two weeks in ad- 
vance of the goldens. 

When they were both here I used to stand 
under the apple-trees and watch them. Some- 
times there must have been twenty in one tree. 
They were very tame, but rarely found time to 
look at me. 

Seen together the golden is appreciably the 
smaller; his legs look shorter, and he is not so 
plump, — appears more like an ordinary bird. 
His back is grayer than the ruby's, and when his 
wings are crossed over it you get an effect of bars 
near the tips. Mr. Golden-crown has a concealed 
patch of cadmium orange in the centre of his 
crown, but his wife is content with the plain gold, 
and the children often show neither black nor 
gold. The goldens seem to have less of the wild 
bluebird habit of lifting their wings when lit, but 



144 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

they hang upside down even more than the rubies, 
often flying up from one spray to light upside 
down on the one above. The goldens have a busi- 
ness-like way of getting under a leaf and picking 
off the insects one after another as fast as their 
tiny bills can work. Their song is said to be 
inferior to that of the rubies, which is considered 
a ten-days' marvel coming from such a tiny bird. 

XLL 

SNOW BUNTING; SNOWFLAKE. 

This is the true snowbird, and though it be- 
longs in the same pigeon-hole — that of the finches 
and sparrows — it can never be confounded with 
the junco. The monastic juncos are closely 
shrouded in slate - gray robes and cowls, only a 
short under robe of white being marked off below 
their breasts. The snowflakes, on the other hand, 
as their name suggests, are mostly white, although 
their backs are streaked with dusky and black. 

The juncos come about the house in spring and 
fall, and during the early snows, but the snow- 
birds, timid and strange, fly over the fields and 
are associated with the wonderful white days of a 
country winter, when the sky is white, the earth 
is white, and the white trees bow silently under 
the wand of winter till they stand an enchanted 
snow forest. For, as the flakes drift through the 



SNOW BUNTING. 145 

air, the snowbirds, undulating between the white 
earth and sky, seem like wandering spirits that 
are a part of the all-pervading whiteness. Tho- 
reau says, " they are the true spirits of the snow- 
storm. They are the animated beings that ride 
upon it and have their life in it." 

Mr. Allen, in speaking of our winter birds, 
says : " The beautiful snow buntings when whirl- 
ing from field to field in compact flocks, their 
white wings glistening in the sunlight, form one 
of the most attractive sights of winter." He adds 
that they are the " bad weather birds " of the su- 
perstitious, as they usually appear mysteriously 
during snowstorms and disappear in the weeks 
of fine weather. He says : " Cold, half -arctic 
countries being their chosen home, they only 
favor us with their presence during those short 
intervals when their food in the northern fields 
is too deeply buried ; and being strong of wing 
and exceedingly rapid in flight, they can in a few 
hours leave the plain for the mountain, or migrate 
hundreds of miles to the northward." 

Late in December I have seen a flock of them 
flying over the meadows with the rhythmical un- 
dulating motion of their cousins the goldfinches, 
twittering ter-ra-lee, ter-ra-lee, ter-ra-lee as they 
went. Now and then they would light for a mo- 
ment to pick at the seeds appearing above the 
snow, but soon they swept on toward the north. 



146 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

XLIL 

SCARLET TANAGER. 

Like the vireos, the scarlet tanager is asso- 
ciated with green tree tops ; but if you ask just 
where you will see him, it is hard to answer. In 
Northampton, I remember finding him in three 
quite dissimilar spots. 

The bird of Paradise has become a familiar 
sight in our museums, but the good people of 
Northampton follow Dante and see " Paradise " 
itself before they die. " Purgatory " is there, 
too, for warning, and the river runs between the 
two abodes ! They lie just outside the town, and 
if you could get some kindly spirit to guide you, 
they would surely seem well named. 

" Purgatory " lies barren and desolate, strewn 
with sand and stones on which the sun beats 
down as if with intent to torture imprisoned 
souls. Opposite stands " Paradise," a wood of 
wondrous beauty, — a true elysium for the im- 
mortal spirits of birds and flowers ! In its heart 
is a grove of musical pines, whose brown, pine- 
needle carpet is garlanded with clumps of ferns. 
Close to the river's edge, reaching their branches 
low over it as it narrows to a stream, the maples 
and birches offer cool green shade when the sun 
is parching the banks of " Purgatory " ; and in 
autumn, when the bare sand and stones grow cold, 



SCARLET TANAGER. 147 

the leaves of " Paradise " burn with the tints of 
sunset. 

On the desolate margin of " Purgatory " you 
rarely see a human face, unless that of some poor 
soul-tormented lunatic who has strayed from the 
asylum on the hill. But in " Paradise " you meet 
groups of merry children, college girls gathering 
wild flowers, and all the town in gala-day attire. 

This is the haunt of the birds, and here the 
Smith Audubon Society has gathered about Mr. 
Burroughs, listening to his interpretation of the 
chippering of the swifts that circle far overhead ; 
hearkening with him to the yellow hammer's cries, 
and watching the happy goldfinches, busy in the 
button-wood tops. Here each level has its bird — 
from the leaves, the oven-bird sends up his cres- 
cendo ; from among the bushes comes the quarry- 
ing note of the white-throats ; low on the boughs 
of the trees the thrushes sit wrapt in meditation ; 
in the top of a sapling the indigo-bird sings of 
the white violets beneath him ; from the hemlocks 
and pines come the screams of the blue jays; 
over the river the kingfisher flies, sounding his 
alarm on the w r ing ; and high overhead the soar- 
ing hawk circles in silence. 

One spring morning when we were in one of 
the most beautiful spots of all Paradise, where a 
tiny rill spreads out over the sand, bathing the 
roots of the bright green grass and the blue for- 
get-me-nots, a true bird of Paradise came flying 



148 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

over our heads, and uttering a loud chuck ah, hid 
away in the leaves. It was the scarlet tanager, 
the bird of glowing coal, whose brilliancy passes 
wonder. His black wings and tail seemed only 
to intensify his flaming coat, which literally daz- 
zled my eyes as I looked at him. Little marvel 
that he takes pleasure in the green leaves ! and 
chooses a wife — in most " natural selection " — 
who is also his complemental color ! 

But how could Madam Tanager ever live with 
such a fiery husband if her eyes did not find re- 
lief in her own greens ? Even then it would seem 
that she had to become accustomed to him by de- 
grees, for in his youth her gay cavalier is relieved 
by green, yellow, and black. Perhaps even his 
own eyes get tired, for like the bobolink and gold- 
finch in the fall he gets out his old clothes and 
flies away south in as plain a garb as his lady's. 

Strolling through Paradise on another day I 
heard a song that I did not know, and leaving the 
river edge with its green grass and forget-me-nots, 
and clambering up the steep hillside where the 
magic witch-hazel blooms and shoots its seeds afar, 
I made my way cautiously to the tree from which 
the voice came. There, high over my head, was 
another scarlet tanager. He was evidently a 
young gentleman, for there was still a yellowish 
streak across his breast, but he sang his woodsy 
song with all the gusto of an old bass. It is 
loud and harsh, but in a rhythm that, as it has 



SCARLET TANAGER. 1-19 

been pertinently expressed, suggests the swinging 
of a pendulum. Kree — kree — ee — kree — eah 
kree — kree — ee kree — eah back and forth, swing- 
ing a little further each time, the whole song often 
ending with an emphatic chip 1 chirr. 

The third place where I found the tanager in 
Northampton — and this seemed to be more of a 
true haunt — was at Fort Hill on the south of 
the town, where, across the meadows, Mount Hoi- 
yoke and Mount Tom tower majestically. Here, 
on a sunny eastern hillside that looks away toward 
the Connecticut, the early adder tongues and hepa- 
ticas are found, and the scarlet tanager shows a 
friendliness that becomes the beautiful spot. 
Close to the footpath I have stood and watched 
him without exciting the least suspicion or fear. 

Here at home I have seen one of the tanagers 
in an ash that shades the house, and they sing in 
various parts of our woods. Still, I feel most 
sure of finding them in a swamp back of the 
raspberry patch. While a botanical friend has 
been looking for rare orchids among the moss and 
ferns, I have followed one of the handsome birds 
through the length of the swamp, punctuating his 
song with broken bird talk. At times, as I stood 
on an old moss-covered log, he would come almost 
up to me, and then, just as I was admiring his 
flaming coat, would fly back singing to himself 
the loud swinging song that seemed to catch new 
beauty from the rich, cool verdure of the swamp. 



150 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Like the vireos, although the tanagers seem to 
prefer the higher branches and tree tops in sing- 
ing and hunting, their nest, a " saucer shaped 
structure," constructed of wiry dead grass-stems 
and like materials, "is built usually on a low 
branch. The eggs are pale bluish or greenish, 
spotted or speckled with brown." 

The tanagers belong in pigeon-hole No. 5, which 
is marked "tanagers," and is between the "finches, 
sparrows, etc.," of No. 4 and the swallows of No. 
6. Unlike the flycatchers and sparrows the males 
are brilliant birds, whose plumage varies greatly 
with the season, and whose plain wives are in 
marked contrast to them. But compare their 
unobtrusive ways with those of the catbird, the 
restless kinglets, chickadees, and blue jays ; and 
their habits with those of the ground-loving oven- 
bird, the nuthatch, snowbird, and partridge, and 
you will see that the difference lies deeper than 
color. 

XLIIL 

BROWN THRASHER. 

In a Massachusetts sand flat, where nothing but 
sand burrs and low scrubby bushes could flourish, 
I heard my first thrasher song. There were a 
pair of birds in a clump of bushes, and we came 
up within a few yards without disturbing them. 
Their backs were rich reddish-brown, and their 



BROWN THRASHER. 151 

breasts creamy or "buffy white," spotted with 
brown, while their sides were heavily streaked. 

The thrashers are about the length and build of 
the cuckoos, and before I had seen them near by 
I confused the two. But you can distinguish be- 
tween them even at a distance, for the breast of 
the cuckoos is pure white, while that of the thrash 
ers is heavily spotted. When you are near enough 
to discern shades, you see that the rich reddish- 
brown back of the thrasher is in strong contrast 
to the dull grayish-brown of the cuckoo. While 
the cuckoo is practically songless, the song of the 
thrasher is excelled by few of our birds, combin- 
ing the flexibility of the catbird with the sweetness 
of the thrush. 

The thrasher is said to show much intelligence 
in choosing the position for its nest. In dry sandy 
regions it seems to prefer the ground, but if the 
soil is damp or clayey it builds in bushes ; and 
along river banks in the west, where sudden 
freshets would swamp a low nest, with notable 
foresight it secures its nest in trees, sometimes as 
high as fifteen or twenty feet from the ground. 

During migration, last fall, I was looking for 
warblers in the raspberry patch one morning be- 
fore breakfast. When near the edge of the woods 
I heard the suppressed shreea & gray squirrel 
makes when scolding between its teeth. It was 
so near that I looked down hoping to catch sight 
of the impudent bright eyes, but not a squirrel 



i52 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA- GLASS. 

could I see. A flock of warblers came just then 
to take my attention, and it was some time before 
I got across the patch. When I did, what was 
my surprise and delight to find a brown thrasher 
sitting near the ground on a drooping bass-wood 
branch in the midst of a noisy company of white- 
throats. He had evidently seen me, for his long 
tail was perked up, his short wings hung at his 
sides, and he looked up half appealingly, as much 
as to say : " Oh dear, what did you come here 
for ? — I wish you would n't hurt me ! — I sup- 
pose I 'd better hide," and so he hopped off to 
another branch, looked back, saw me still staring, 
and disappeared* 

After breakfast I came back to the spot. Lis- 
tening closely I heard the squirrel-like scold that 
I had noticed before on the opposite side of the 
patch, and something moving on the leaves under 
the bushes by my side. What was this mysterious 
creature ? Silently I turned toward it and gazed 
through my glass, almost holding my breath to 
hear. Again came the noise, and, between the 
leaves, every few seconds I could catch sight of a 
brown tail wagging up and down. Suddenly, 
there it stood in full view, the thrasher ! I could 
see even his yellow eyes ! He was only three or 
four feet away, but hopped about quite uncon- 
cernedly until I made myself too conspicuous; 
then he vanished, and I hunted the patch over for 
another glimpse of him. When I did find him, 



ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 153 

he was sitting quietly oh the top of a small stump. 
He had no objection to make to me then, but 
when Balder began stalking around among the 
bushes he stretched up till he made himself look 
comically like a long narrow-necked bottle, when 
he took a survey and departed. 



XLIV. 

ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 

Just back of the Smith College campus, on 
the bank of Mill River, where the catbird talked 
to himself in the sunny orchard, the handsome 
purple finch made love to his lady bird, and the 
cuckoo hid away among the leaves, the rose- 
breasted grosbeak used to stop before beginning 
housekeeping. A big maple in one corner of the 
orchard by the river was his favorite cover, but 
we have watched him sing quite fearlessly in a 
small elm on the outside of the orchard, close to 
the road. 

What a beauty he was too ! He wore a deco- 
rous glossy black coat and white vest, but where 
his black choker touched his shirt front — was it 
a beautiful pink rose he had fastened on to catch 
the eye of his lady ? And as he flew past, show- 
ing white blotches on his tail and at its base, was 
that rose powder with which he had touched the 
under side of his wings ? His wife was as good 



154 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

a foil to him as her cousins, the plain little pur- 
ple finch and indigo-bird are to their handsome 
husbands. She looked decidedly like a sparrow, 
and had patches of saffron-yellow under her 
wings, where the male had carmine. Both had 
heavy finch bills. His was yellow, and he scraped 
it on the side of a branch as a man would sharpen 
a knife on a whetstone — first on one side and 
then on the other. Perhaps we should say, men 
sharpen their knives as birds do their bills, for it 
is more likely that the birds set the fashion! 

The song of the grosbeak is loud, clear, and 
sweet, with a rhythm like the tanager's. It is 
a longer song, however, with the rough edges 
rounded off, and has, moreover, something of the 
oriole quality. The call note is as characteristic 
as the chip chirr of the tanager. It is a thin, 
unsteady kick, and usually prefaces the song. 

The nest of the grosbeak in " Paradise " was 
in the border of a thicket, almost within our 
reach, and when we discovered it, Mr. Grosbeak's 
big black head and yellow bill were protruding 
over the edge. We could not help laughing at 
this domestic turn, he looked so out of place ; 
but we liked him all the better for minding the 
babies while his wife took a rest. 



WBIPPOOR WILL. — WINTER WREN. 155 
XLV. 

WHIPPOORWILL. 

In the warm summer twilight as we drive along 
the bank of Black River, watching the sunset 
glow fade in the west, and catching its glistening 
reflection in the water, over the low foot-hills of 
the Adirondacks on the east comes the big red 
harvest moon. Then, as we stop the horses to 
listen, even the sibilant whirr of the locusts' 
wings and the subdued chirring of the crickets 
are hushed, for out of the woods comes the loud 
wild call — whip-poor-will, ichip-poor-will, whip- 
poor-ioill. 

The whippoorwill belongs to the family of 
"goatsuckers, swifts, etc.," and so must be put 
in the drawer where the chimney swift, humming- 
bird, partridge, cuckoos, woodpeckers, and all the 
others that did not belong to the order of " perch- 
ing birds " were left by themselves. 

XLVL 

WINTER WREN. 

One October day when the raspberry patch 
was astir with fluttering kinglets and warblers, 
and noisy with the quarrying of white-throats, 
and the muttered excuses and wait, wait of tardy 



156 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

crows flying hurriedly over to the caucus in the 
next woods, I found the piquant little winter 
wrens bobbing about among the bushes oblivious 
to everything but their own particular business. 

I gave one of them a start as I came on him 
unexpectedly, and so, on catching sight of a sec- 
ond, kept cautiously quiet. But, if you please, 
as soon as he got a glimpse of me, the inquisitive 
brown sprite came hurrying from one raspberry 
stem to another, with his absurd bit of a square 
tail over his back, and never once stopped till he 
got near enough for a good look. There he clung, 
atilt of a stem, bobbing his plump little body 
from side to side, half apologetically, but saying 
quip with an air that assured me he was afraid of 
no giants, however big ! When I had admired 
his mottled, dusky vest and his rusty brown coat 
with its fine dusky barring, and noted the light 
line over his eye, and the white edging of his 
wing ; and when he had decided to his satisfac- 
tion what I was doing there in the woods, he went 
hopping along, under an arching fern, off to the 
nearest stump. 

When they are out hunting, their tails standing 
over their backs, their necks bent forward and 
their straight bills sticking out ahead, these little 
wrens have a most determined air! First you 
see one examining the sides and top of an old 
stump, running about, dipping down into the hol- 
low, and then flitting off among the bushes, chat- 



WINTER WREN. 157 

tering quip-quap as he goes. Then one flies 
against the side of a tree to peck at a promising 
bit of bark and clambers several feet up the 
trunk to show what a good gymnast he is ; and 
finally one pops up with a worm in his mouth, 
shakes it well before eating, and afterwards wipes 
his bill with the energy characteristic of the ac- 
tive, healthy temper of the whole wren family. 

On the twelfth of October the ground was cov- 
ered with snow, and the woods were so white and 
still I hardly expected to find anything in the 
raspberry patch. But walking through I discov- 
ered one of the little wrens, as active and busy as 
ever. As I stood watching him he climbed into 
the cosiest cover of leaves that a bush ever offered 
a bird for shelter, and I supposed he would settle 
himself to wait for the sun. But no ! he exam- 
ined it carefully, turning his head on one side 
and then the other, probably thinking it would 
be a very nice place for some tender worm, and 
then flew out into the cold snowy bushes again. 

On the twenty-second of the month, when we 
had had a still heavier fall of snow, and the 
wrens found it too cold even to take dinner from 
a golden-rod stem, one of the confiding little birds 
came to hunt on the piazza right in front of my 
study window. You should have seen him work ! 
He ignored the crumbs I threw out for him, but 
flitted about, running over the shrivelled vines 
trained over the piazza, and examining all the 



158 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

cracks and crannies where a fly might edge itself 
into the moulding. Once he dropped a worm, 
and you should have seen him come tumbling 
down after it ! 

The nest of this brave little bird is snug and 
warm, made of moss, lined with soft feathers, and 
lodged " in crevices of dead logs or stumps in 
thick, coniferous woods." What a pleasure it 
would be to follow him north, and study all his 
pretty ways in the dark forest home, where he 
furnishes mirth and sunshine all the summer 
through. 

The wren is found in pigeon-hole No. 10, 
along with his cousins the thrasher and catbird. 
" Wrens, thrashers, etc.,*' is on the door-plate — 
perhaps the catbird is left out because he always 
takes pains to announce himself. All the house- 
hold have long bills, and the catbird and thrasher 
have also long tails, with very short wings , while 
they all have a piquant way of perking up their 
tails when startled. 

In contrast to the vireos, tanagers, and orioles, 
these birds spend most of their time in shrubs or 
bushes rather than in high trees. Different birds 
take various levels — stories in their out-of-doors 
house. The sparrows and chewinks live in the 
basement — on the ground-floor; the wrens and 
thrashers on the first floor in bushes and shrubs ; 
the indigo-bird on the third floor — low trees ; 
the vireos and tanagers and orioles on the fourth 



RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 159 

floor — high, trees ; while the swallows and swifts 
go above all — in the air. 



XLVII. 

RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 

The handsome red-head can be distinguished 
at almost any distance by his sharply blocked 
" tricolor " of glossy blue-black, bright crimson, 
and clear white. Beginning with his red head, 
the stripes of the French flag are reversed, for 
the order is not red, white, and blue, but red, 
blue (black), and white. Underneath he is pure 
white. Mr. Burroughs speaks of his flitting 
about the open woods, " connecting the trees by 
a gentle arc of crimson and white ! " 

When common, the red -headed woodpecker 
may be found everywhere, — in the orchards, gar- 
dens, fields, and woods, — but in many parts of 
the country he is rather rare. He is an erratic 
migrant, his residence in any district depending 
on the nut supply ; so that you may not see him 
for a year or more at a time. 

Like the California woodpecker, the red-heads 
are " hoarders." They have been found making 
a business of storing away beech nuts. They 
would hide them not only in knot-holes, between 
cracks in the bark, and under strips of loosened 
bark, but also in fence posts, railroad ties, and 



160 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

between shingles on the roofs of houses ; and in 
several instances when their store-house was full, 
the woodpeckers would take the precaution to 
roof it over with a layer of empty hulls, or bits 
of wood and bark. 



XLVIIL 

YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER. 

In the spring the yellow-bellied woodpecker is 
a mercurial Frenchman compared with the sober, 
self-contained Englishmen, his cousins, the hairy 
and downy. They contrast as scarlet and gray. 
Even their dress marks them. The hairy and 
downy are robed like grave philosophers in black 
and white, the old fathers merely donning a red 
cap for dignity. But though the sapsucker has 
to be content with a mottled black and white coat, 
besides a red cap, he wears a crimson frontlet, a 
bib-shaped piece of crimson satin fastened close 
under his chin, and bordering this a circlet of 
black satin, below which, and falling to his feet, 
is his pale yellow robe. 

In April and May, especially during courting, 
the air is full of his boisterous cries. In the edge 
of the woods, in the orchard, by the side of the 
house, the excited birds flicker from tree to tree, 
chasing each other about. Sometimes two of 
them march up opposite sides of the same tree, 



YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER. 161 

with arching necks and rapid, taunting cries of 
chuck 1 ah, chuck 1 ah, chuck 1 ah, chuck! ah, and then 
circle around the trunk after each other like a 
pair of hot-headed suitors quarrelling over their 
lady-love. When they are in a calmer mood their 
cry, though still emphatic, loses much of its taunt- 
ing tone, and is more like che tehee 1 , che whee r , 
che whee r , che whee'. They have a variety of call 
notes, such as kree, kray ; yah! , yah! , and kre f ah, 
all full of spirited emphasis. But their ebullient 
feelings cannot be expressed in that way ; they 
must needs take to drumming and tinning. I 
quote from an account of their performances pub- 
lished ten years ago by my brother, Dr. C. Hart 
Merriam. It is interesting to note that their 
habits have not changed in that time. He says : 
"At this season scarcely an hour passes from 
daylight to sunset that one or more cannot be 
heard drumming with commendable perseverance 
upon the tin-roofs, eave-troughs, or escape-pipes 
of our house or some of the out-buildings. They 
strike the tin violently half a dozen or more times, 
evidently enjoying the sound thus produced, and 
then rest a few minutes before repeating the per- 
formance. Each woodpecker usually returns to 
the same spot, and on our rocf are several patches 
the size of one's hand, from which the paint has 
been entirely drummed off. On the escape-pipe 
they sometimes follow around a joint, and by con- 
stant and long-continued pounding so loosen the 



162 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

solder that the dependent portion of the pipe falls 
down. How they manage to cling to these verti- 
cal pipes and the nearly perpendicular portions of 
the roof is a mystery. I have seen both sexes 
at work on our roof, but the female does not 
often indulge in this pastime, and is rarely ob- 
served to take part in the boisterous gambols 
of the males. In the groves and forests where 
tin-roofed buildings do not abound, the yellow- 
bellied woodpeckers amuse themselves by pound- 
ing upon such dry hollow trees and hard resonant 
limbs as multiply the sound tenfold, so that one 
can at a distance readily distinguish them from 
other members of the family." 

The name "sapsucker" is more appropriately 
applied to the yellow-bellied woodpecker than to 
the nuthatch, for instead of taking an occasional 
taste of the sap at the sugar-bush in spring, he 
spends much of his time riddling live trees with 
squarish holes, to which he returns to drink the 
oozing sap and feast upon the insects that gather. 

The woodpeckers, I have noticed, all work in 
about the same way, varying their methods to suit 
the character of the wood. The only time I ever 
watched the sapsucker drill a maple he worked 
like the hairy, first giving a dozen or more quick 
blows with his head turned on one side, and then 
as many more with his head on the other side — 
just as a carpenter chisels, cutting out a wedge 
instead of going straight down. After working 



GREAT-CRESTED FLYCATCHER. 163 

in this way for a time, he seemed to pick out bits 
of wood — his shavings — and drop them to the 
ground. When tired working at one hole he 
would go on to another. The bark was torn from 
an area of several inches, and this was riddled 
with holes apparently in process of making. The 
woodpeckers are not perching birds, and so must 
be put in the drawer with the kingfisher, cuckoo, 
humming-birds, and others. Of the five we have 
had, the yellow hammer is the least of a wood- 
pecker, building comparatively low, having a trill 
that takes the place of a song, hunting on the 
ground and fences as well as on trees for his food, 
and, accordingly, assuming an earth-colored dis- 
guise that would be of little use to the other 
woodpeckers. The sapsucker and the yellow 
hammer go south for the winter, but the downy 
and hairy are permanent residents, while the red- 
headed woodpecker's presence is entirely depen- 
dent on the food supply. The sapsucker is the 
most boisterous of the five — the sombre hairy 
and downy the most silent. Of them all the red- 
head is the family beauty. 

XLIX. 

GREAT-CRESTED FLYCATCHER. 
t 

In spring, when a loud piercing whistle comes 
shrilling from the woods —one note given in ris- 



164 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

ing inflection — I know that the great-crested fly- 
catcher has arrived. There is always an excite- 
ment about the event that prompts you to seize 
your hat and rush out to find him. And a sight 
of him up in a tree top is worth more than one 
walk ! 

By the side of the other flycatchers in pigeon- 
hole No. 1, he stands at the head of the family. 
What an aristocratic bearing his great crest gives 
him ! And look at his olive coat, his ash-gray vest, 
and his bright sulphur - yellow knickerbockers ! 
You almost expect him to produce wig and shoe- 
buckles ! Then compare his manners with those 
of his plain gray cousins. Do you suppose he 
could let his wings and his fine rufous tail hang 
down as the least flycatcher, the phoebe, and the 
wood pewee do ? And could such a dignified bird 
demean himself with the petty bickerings of the 
kingbird, or the recklessness of the warlike least 
flycatcher ? 

The great-crest flies restlessly among the tree 
tops, uttering his shrill cry, and soliloquizing in a 
low warbling twitter. He also has a loud short 
chatter reserved for occasion, and I have seen him 
on a tree by the house scolding away with a whee 
ree. 

His nest shows all the eccentricity of genius. 
It is usually made in a knot-hole, at varying 
heights from the ground. But the strangest thing 
about it, and that which distinguishes it from the 



BANK SWALLOW. 165 

nests of all other North American birds, is the 
remarkable fact that cast-off snake skins are used 
in its construction. This is true even in localities 
wher*e snakes are so uncommon that an ordinary 
person may spend a lifetime without finding one 
of their skins. Surely the birds must possess keen 
eyes and much local knowledge of the haunts of 
the snakes when the shedding process is going on ! 
Mrs. Treat tells of a pair of great-crested fly- 
catchers that built in a bird-house on top of the 
stable. First, she says, they go to all the bird- 
houses " scattered about on the posts " in the 
vineyard, but as we would expect of such aristo- 
crats, choose " the finest establishment on the 
premises — a three -storied, octagon house, sur- 
mounted with a cupola and spire, with a weather 
vane and ball attached." Though a pair of blue- 
birds have kept all would-be tenants away for 
several years, they offer no resistance to the fly- 
catchers, who settle in the empty cupola. 

L. 

BANK SWALLOW; SAND MARTIN. 

Like the kingfisher the bank swallow excavates 
a hole for his nest, and when you are driving 
through cuts in sand or clay banks you will often 
see the birds pop out of their holes in the sides 
and fly off up in the air. They are the plainest 



166 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

of our common swallows, being dead grayish-brown 
above and white below, with a band of grayish- 
brown across the breast, so that vanity does not 
interfere with their underground life. 



LI. 

EAVE SWALLOW; CLIFF SWALLOW. 

The cliff swallow is the common swallow that 
we constantly see on telegraph wires and about 
barns in company with the barn swallow. It is 
easy enough to distinguish between them, because 
the tail of the eave, instead of being deeply forked, 
is almost square ; its back, instead of being glossy 
steel-blue, is dull blackish, and it also lacks the 
steel-blue collar. 

The nest of the cliff swallow is "a gourd or 
retort-shaped structure composed of pellets of mud 
mixed with a few straws and lined with soft feath- 
ers, attached to the face of overhanging cliffs or 
underneath the eaves of buildings." 

LIL 

CROSSBILLS. 

In November, 1887, one of the commonest sounds 
heard on my walks was an odd metallic kimp, 
kimp, kimp, coming from a flock of crossbills far 



CROSSBILLS. 167 

up in the air. They were often so high that I 
could not see them, and one day several flocks 
passed over my head, affording only a glimpse of 
black dots for them all. Their note often came 
from the hemlocks back in the woods, and on 
Thanksgiving morning I had the satisfaction of 
seeing the noisy strangers. 

They had come out in the clearing, and lighted 
near a milk-house, some on a tree and others on 
the ground. I crept up as noiselessly as the crusty 
snow would allow, and, screening myself behind 
another building, watched them for some time. 
They seemed nervous, for every few minutes they 
started up simultaneously with a whirr, flew about 
a few seconds, and then settled down again. 

When they were resting, those that were not 
chattering warbled to themselves in a sweet under- 
tone, but when a new company joined their ranks 
they all began jabbering, and it was a grave ques- 
tion if any of them could hear what they were 
asking, or their neighbors trying to tell. Then as 
they broke up into groups and went wheeling 
about in the air, the glittering gilt deer weather- 
vane on top of a barn a few rods away attracted 
them, and some of them lit on the horns a mo- 
ment in passing. Several squads of them flew 
away, and as the confusion decreased the others 
grew less restless, and twenty or thirty flew down 
under the milk-house door and began picking up 
what they could find on the stones. 



168 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

Such a mixture of colors ! The old gentlemen 
were the handsomest, being some shade of red, 
while their wives and children were olivaceous or 
grayish. They seemed like a shifting kaleido- 
scope of colors, as they hopped about busily hunt- 
ing for food. 

Among them were a few of their cousins, the 
pine finches, and I thought I heard some gold- 
finches with those that passed over. I got the 
pretty visitors a basket of grain, and scattered it 
on the crust for them, but they seemed to prefer 
cone seeds, for they soon flew over to the spruces. 

Unmindful of the laws of adaptation of which 
these bills are such an interesting example, the 
legend accounts for them in its own beautiful way. 
It has it that the birds tried to pull the nails from 
the cross, and in doing so twisted their bills in 
such a way that wherever they go they will always 
bear the symbol of their merciful deed. 

The crossbills are very erratic in habit, and 
wander over large areas where they do not remain 
to build. They nest throughout the coniferous 
forests of the northern United States and Canada, 
and in mountains of the Southern States, notably 
in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. 

A curious example of this bird's fondness for 
salt is recorded by Mr. Eomeyn B. Hough. An 
old ice-cream freezer, after becoming permeated 
with salt, was thrown out where the crossbills had 
access to it, and throughout the winter flocks of 



NIGHT-HA WK. 169 

the birds came to it, like deer to a salt-lick. They 
were so eager that, in some places, they actually 
nibbled almost through the wood until, as Mr. 
Hough says, the freezer looked as if mice had 
been gnawing it. 

LIIL 
night-hawk; bull bat. 

Just at twilight, above the chippering of the 
chimney swifts, you will often hear sharp cries 
that startle you into looking overhead. Circling 
in the air after insects you will see large, dark 
colored birds, with narrow, clear cut, crescent 
shaped wings and slender bodies. If they come 
near enough you will catch the white bars on their 
wings as they fly rapidly by. If your eyes and 
glass are both good perhaps you will get a glimpse 
of their curious great mouths, wide open as they 
fly ; and then the mysterious disappearance of the 
swarms of insects that hover in the air will be 
picturesquely explained. 

A study of bills would be as suggestive as in- 
teresting. With each group, as we have seen, the 
form is modified to suit the needs of the birds, — 
the woodpeckers have long strong bills for ham- 
mering and excavating ; the sparrows short stout 
cones for seed cracking ; the vireos long slender 
bills for holding worms ; and the flycatchers bills 



170 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

hooked at the end for holding insects ; but per- 
haps the most extreme cases of adaptation are to 
be found in those of the kingfisher, humming- 
bird, crossbill, and night-hawk. In the night- 
hawk and whippoorwill the enormous fish-trap of 



the kingfisher is exchanged for — almost no bill 
at all, merely a hook and eye for a wide gaping 
mouth. 

The night-hawk and whippoorwill are the most 
nearly related of the four birds we have from the 
order of " goatsuckers, swifts, etc." They are 
both brown-mottled birds, and are similar in build 
and general habit. The swifts resemble the night- 
hawks in having narrow clear cut wings, small 
bills, and big mouths, but in habit they are almost 



GRASS FINCH. 171 

as unlike them as the humming-bird. All four 
birds have strong wings, however, and so, as a 
group, contrast with the sparrows in No. 4, and 
the wrens and thrashers in No. 10. 



LIV. 

GRASS FINCH ; VESPER SPARROW ; BAY-WINGED 
BUNTING. 

When riding in the country it is well to carry 
your opera-glass and examine the birds you find 
on the fences along the road. Sparrows are very 
common, and if you see one running along the 
fence ahead of you, whose streaked back seems 
too light for a song sparrow, you will do well to 
watch him closely. When he flies up, if you see 
white tail feathers, you know who your friend is 
at once ; the meadow-lark and the grass finch are 
two of the commonest of the few white tail-feath- 
ered birds. His white breast and sides are streak- 
ed, and the markings on his back almost give the 
effect of stripes. But the chestnut-brown on his 
wings and his white tail feathers are enough to 
distinguish him among the sparrows. His song 
resembles that of the song sparrow, but while it 
wants the cheery brightness we love in that, its 
plaintive element gives it a richness which the 
other lacks. 

The grass finch is a timorous little bird, and his 



172 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

interest in the genus Homo seems to be confined 
to the people who pass along the road. These 
appear to fascinate him, and it is always with re- 
luctance that he flies away before them. A grass 
finch he certainly is. He nests in the grass, hops 
about in the grass, lives upon seeds he finds in the 
grass, and rarely gets much farther away than a 
roadside fence, or a tree that is surrounded by 
grass. 

LV. 

TREE SPARROW. 

The tree sparrows look much like their cousin 
chippy, but have something of the free mountain 
air and pine-tree atmosphere about them that the 
domestic chippy lacks. 

I find them in spring and fall along the edge of 
the woods, or in the fields, eating grass seed ; and 
a flock of them spent last April with us, sing- 
ing with the fox sparrows in the evergreens, and 
coming about the house in the most friendly man- 
ner. Indeed the lordly little creatures quite took 
possession of the corn boxes in front of the dining- 
room window, and drove off the juncos with a sad 
show of temper. I forgave them, however, for I 
had a capital chance to observe them while they 
were eating the buckwheat. 

Chippy, you know, has a way of crouching close 
to the ground. The tree sparrows, on the con- 



WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW. 173 

trary, are erect, dignified looking birds, and raise 
their dark rufous caps with much more effect than 
chippy ever does. They differ from him, too, in 
having the lower part of their backs unstriped, in 
having rusty washings on the sides of their ashy 
breasts, and a dusky spot in the centre of the 
breast similar to the song sparrow's breastpin. 
Their song, though thinner than that of the song 
sparrow, is sweet and pleasing. 



LVL 

WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW. 

During migration the white-crowns generally 
keep by themselves, though sometimes they may 
be seen in flocks of white-throated sparrows, so it 
is well to inspect each bird carefully. The crown 
will enable you to discriminate between them, for 
in the white-crown the marking gives more the 
effect of a soldier's cap, the bands of clear white 
encircling the back of the head. This adds to 
the distinguished air of the bird, which, with his 
clearer grays and browns, his more shapely figure 
and erect carriage, soon become enough to mark 
him in themselves. For, as the great-crested fly- 
catcher overshadows the plebeian phoebe, the 
white - crowned sparrow is the aristocrat of his 
family. But besides all this he lacks the yellow 
seen on the head of the white-throat, and the 



174 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

median white-crown stripe that separates the two 
black lines is broader than in the white-throat. 
His chin, too, is less markedly white. 

The song of the two sparrows is entirely differ- 
ent. The white-throat's is a plaintive whistle, both 
rich and sweet, while the white - crowned has a 
comparatively low, commonplace song, something 
like — 

r f r p r c 

whe - he - he - be - hee - lie 



LVII. 

FIELD SPARROW; BUSH SPARROW. 

Mr. Burroughs calls the bush sparrow chip- 
py's " country cousin," and when you have once 
seen him you will agree that no detail could de- 
scribe him as well. Instead of having a smooth 
tight fitting coat, his feathers are ruffled up care- 
lessly while the clear ashy breast of chippy is re- 
placed by a rusty one, and his cap is much duller. 
Altogether his appearance is thoroughly rustic. 
But he has not only these external marks of the 
country cousin. Chippy is eminently sophisti- 
cated, and assumes " airs," and indulges in petu- 
lance that is foreign to the kindly sparrow race. 
The little bush sparrow, however, is a pleasing 
contrast. He has a genuine, simple nature, and 



FOX SPARROW. 175 

when he sings his sweet song wins your friendship 
on the spot. But he has one habit that exasper- 
ates an observer. There is a field of low bushes 
on the north side of " Paradise," and I have chased 
after him through it until I quite forgot that he 
had, any virtues ! No sooner would I hear his 
song, catch a glimpse of a brown back, and creep 
up softly within opera-glass range, than lo ! there 
he would be hopping about singing from a bush a 
rod away ! 



Lvni. 

FOX SPARROW. 

In the spring of 1887 the fox sparrows were 
here for some time, coming occasionally to eat 
buckwheat on the corn boxes with the tree spar- 
rows and juncos. They were large, fat birds, 
strikingly bluish-slate about the head, and rich 
reddish-brown on the wings, lower part of back, 
and tail. The centres of the breast markings 
were set in an ochraceous suffusion. 

They came to the boxes much more timidly 
than the other birds, slipping in quietly for a few 
mouthfuls, as if afraid of being seen. But they 
made themselves at home in the saplings on the 
edge of the woods right back of the house, singing 
in the sun quite fearlessly, even when I was walk- 
ing about on the crust, staring at them through 



176 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

my glass, and taking liberties with their mother 
tongue. Their song resembled that of the song 
sparrow in arrangement of note, but was richer, 
and had a plaintive cast. 



LIX. 

BROWN CREEPER. 

At last we have a bird to put into our empty 
pigeon-hole, No. 2, — the "creepers." Like the 
"thrashers and wrens" in No. 10, his prevailing 
color is brown, and he has a long slender bill, 
while he resembles the nuthatch — his neighbor 
in No. 12 — in habits. In his way, however, the 
brown creeper is a unique bird. He is so nearly 
the color of the brown bark of the trees you 
often overlook him as he goes rocking up their 
sides. When pecking at the bark he looks even 
more convex than the yellow hammer ; for besides 
the curve given by his tail as he braces himself 
by it, and the continuing curve of his back as he 
bends forward, his bill is long and curved, thus 
completing the arc. 

He is a systematic workman, going over his 
ground in a painstaking fashion, sometimes even 
flitting back a few feet to examine a piece of moss 
over again. He usually begins at the bottom of 
a tree and works up, sometimes circling, at others 
flitting up, and again rocking straight up the 



BROWN CREEPER. 177 

side. He nests as close to the heart of the tree as 
he can get, little brown wood sprite that he is, 
creeping under a bit of loosened bark, or getting 
into some cranny of the sort, that he can fit up 
for his white eggs with felt and feathers. 



WARBLERS. 



When you begin to study the warblers you will 
probably conclude that you know nothing about 
birds, and can never learn. But if you begin by 
recognizing their common traits, and then study 
a few of the easiest, and those that nest in your 
locality, you will be less discouraged ; and when 
the flocks come back at the next migration you 
will be able to master the oddities of a larger 
number. They belong in pigeon-hole No. 9, — la- 
belled " wood warblers," and are a marked family. 

Most of them are very small — much less than 
half the size of a robin — and are not only short 
but slender. Active as the chickadee or kinglet, 
they flit about the trees and undergrowth after 
insects, without charity for the observer who is 
trying to make out their markings. Unlike the 
waxwing, whose quiet ways are matched by its 
subdued tints, or the uniformly coated kinglets or 
the greenlets in the pigeon-hole next to them, as 
a group, the warblers are dashed with all the glo- 
ries of the rainbow, a flock of them looking as if 
a painter's palette had been thrown at them. You 
can see no philosophy or poetry in the bewilder- 



SUMMER YELLOW-BIRD. 179 

ing combinations, and when you find that they 
differ entirely with age and sex, you despair of 
ever knowing them. 

Why they should be called warblers is a puzzle, 
as a large percentage of them have not as much 
song as chippy — nothing but a thin chatter, or a 
shrill piping trill. If you wish a negative concep- 
tion of them, think of the coloring and habits of 
the cuckoo. No contrast could be more complete. 
The best places to look for them during migration 
are young trees, orchards, and sunny slopes. Here 
I find them in old orchards, swamps, the rasp- 
berry patch, and the edge of the woods. In 
Northampton they showed an annoying fondness 
for pine-tree tops, but atoned for it by giving us 
the best views of them in the orchards and on the 
steep bank of Mill River. 



LX. 

SUMMER YELLOW-BIRD ; GOLDEN WARBLER ; YEL- 
LOW WARBLER. 

If you have caught glimpses of this little war- 
bier building in your orchard or the shrubbery of 
your garden, you may have wondered about his 
relation to the other yellow-bird — the goldfinch. 
But when you look at them critically you will find 
the two entirely distinct. The goldfinch dons a 
bright canary suit, set off by black cap, wings, 



180 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

and tail. The summer yellow-bird, on the con- 
trary, wears heavier yellow, and is not only with- 
out the contrasting black, but looks dull from the 
" obsolete " brown streaks on his vest. The gold- 
finch is a larger bird, and, as he lives on seeds 
rather than insects, has the thick finch bill instead 
of the fine one of the warbler. On the wing, at 
a distance, the peculiar curved undulating flight 
of the goldfinch marks him ; and when you are 
near enough to hear him sing, you will find that 
his canary-like song is totally unlike the warbler 
trill of the summer yellow-bird. 

One spring we discovered a golden warbler's 
nest in the top of an apple-tree in the old North- 
ampton orchard, near the nest a song sparrow had 
built at the bottom of a brush heap, and the loose 
bunch of twigs the catbirds had patched up with 
newspaper in an apple-tree crotch. Perhaps the 
little bird thought its persistent enemy, Madam 
Cowbird, would be less likely to visit its nest if 
other mother birds were on the watch near by — 
for the golden warbler is the bird spoken of as 
having had to build three stories to rid itself of 
the cowbird's eggs. 

LXI. 

REDSTART. 

The long tail of the redstart makes him appear 
about the size of a chipping bird. In habits, 



REDSTART. 181 

however, he is more like the flycatchers than the 
sparrows. Indeed, you might imagine that it was 
from his flycatcher-like way of starting up or fall- 
ing through the air unexpectedly that he got his 
name ; for then you can see the blotches of rich 
salmon that mark his wings and tail. However 
this may be, the rest of his plumage is as striking 
as Jiis tail. His back is glossy black, and each 
side of his white breast is ornamented with a 
patch of bright salmon or red. The female, as 
usual, is plainer than her spouse — has no black 
on her breast, is olivaceous above, and light yel- 
low where the male is salmon. The young birds 
are like their mother, only browner above. As 
the young males begin to put in coat or vest a 
patch or a gore of their father's colors, they get 
a ludicrously motley look ; and when they finally 
come out in the full handsome suit of black and 
red, you imagine them as proud as the college 
senior with his silk hat. 

Like the flycatchers, the redstarts are fluffy 
birds and sit with drooping wings. But they 
show warbler blood by the mad way they career 
about, opening and shutting their tails fan-fash- 
ion, turning somersaults, flitting from branch to 
branch, stopping a second to give a little burst of 
song, and then fluttering around again ; chasing 
helter-skelter among the bushes ; and suddenly 
falling through the leaves as if they had been shot, 
only to snap up their prey and dart off to begin 
their gambols over again. 



182 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

They are winning, friendly little things, and 
make pretty nests of fine roots, birch bark, and 
flower cotton, or some such dainty material. Ac- 
cording to individual taste, they build in apple- 
tree crotches, low roadside bushes, or in saplings 




in open woods. In " Paradise " one once built in 
a loop of grape-vine by the river, and when her 
gray nest was nearly finished she had a pretty 
way of sitting inside and leaning over the edge to 
smooth the outside with her bill and neck, as if 
she were moulding it. The redstarts take good 
care to select bark the color of the tree, and in 
that way defy any but the keenest scrutiny. A 
little housewife will sometimes fly to her nest 
with strips of bark four inches long streaming 
from her bill. 

The redstart's song is a fine, hurried warbler 



REDSTART, 183 

trill that he accents on the end as if glad it was 
done. 

t / ? : ' f :* . j J j 

Te - ka - te - ka - te - ka - te - ka - teek'. 

One morning as I was watching a young hairy 
woodpecker, the solicitude of a redstart diverted 
me. Keeping up a nervous, worried cry, she eyed 
me from all sides, and when I moved, followed 
me in such a significant way that when I had 
looked through the crotches for her nest without 
finding it, I concluded the young were out. Fa- 
ther Redstart, — a young male with the scarlet 
just appearing on the sides of his breast, — mean- 
while, showed about as much paternal anxiety as 
Mr. Indigo on similar occasions. Suddenly I es- 
pied one of the baby birds, a wee scrawny, gray 
thing, sitting on the dead branch of a fallen tree. 
As I came near him, his mother's terror was piti- 
ful. She flew about as if distraught ; now trying 
to draw me away, she cried out and fluttered her 
wings beseechingly ; then, finding that I still kept 
looking toward the little fellow, she flew down be- 
tween us and tried to lure me off. I was very 
anxious to see if she would " trail," and so was 
merciless. Walking toward her trembling bird I 
raised my hand as if to take him, at the same 
time glancing over at her — behold ! she was try- 
ing another device — assuming indifference, as if 
divining that my interest in her was greater than 



i84 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

in her little one. Her eyes were fixed on me, 
however, and just before the baby flew from my 
approaching hand, she dashed down and flew 
about wildly, trailing, as I had hoped. It was 
pitiful to see her distress, and having taken a 
good look at her I retreated as fast as possible. 

Each bird has its own method of decoy: the 
whippoorwill starts up the leaves that look like 
her scampering babies ; the kingfisher falls on 
the surface of the water ; and the redstart, instead 
of spreading her wings and tail and dragging 
them on the ground as the oven-bird does, spreads 
and drags her tail, while she flutters her wings 
with a tremulous motion, which is much more ef- 
fective, — suggestive of weakness and helplessness 
to the hungry animal, who finds a fat, full-grown 
bird more appetizing than a scrawny youngster ; 
suggestive of anguish to the man, to whom it 
seems an appeal for mercy. The love of knowl- 
edge gave little excuse for treating a poor little 
mother to such a scare, but I consoled myself by 
thinking that she would be all the more wary 
when real danger threatened. 



LXII. 

BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING WARBLER. 

As his name indicates, this creeper is entirely 
black and white. Except on the underside of his 



BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING WARBLER. 185 

breast, where there is an area of plain white, the 
colors are arranged mostly in alternate streaks. 
Although much more slender, the creeper is just 
about the length of the chickadee, of whom he re- 
minds you by his fondness for tree trunks and 
branches. His habits of work, though, are much 
more suggestive of the nuthatch and brown 
creeper, and as the three are often found together 
during migration, it is easy to compare them. 

The black and white creeper is more active than 
the others ; that is, he has more of the restless 
warbler habit of flitting. He is not as painstak- 
ing nor as systematic as the brown creeper ; and 
has neither as good head nor feet as the nuthatch. 
Where the brown creeper would go over a tree 
trunk twice, to be sure that nothing had escaped 
him, the black and white creeper will run up the 
side of a trunk a little way, then bob about on 
the branches for a moment, and flit off to another 
tree. He will hang head down from a branch to 
peck at the bark, and circle round a small tree 
horizontally, but I have never seen him go down 
a tree head first, as the nuthatch does, or walk 
around the underside of a branch. He will stand 
and look over the edge of a branch as if trying 
to see around underneath, but if he concludes to 
go to the other side he will flit around instead of 
walking. His song is a high-keyed trill, and as 
he is protected by being nearly the color of the 
gray bark he is usually clinging to, it is a grate- 
ful help to the discovery of his whereabouts. 



186 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

LXIIL 

BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER; HEMLOCK WARBLER *, 
ORANGE-THROATED WARBLER . 

The Blackburnian is one of the handsomest 
and most easily recognized of the warblers. His 
throat is a rich orange or flame color, so brilliant 
that it is enough in itself to distinguish him from 
any of the others. His back is black with yel- 
lowish markings. His crown is black, but has 
an orange spot in the centre ; and the rest of his 
head, except near his eye, is the same flaming 
orange as his throat. His wings have white 
patches, and his breast is whitish, tinged with yel- 
low. His sides are streaked with black. The 
female and young are duller, the black of their 
backs being mingled with olive ; while their 
throats are yellow instead of orange. 

Now and then you are fortunate enough to get 
a near view of this exquisite bird, but he has an 
exasperating fondness for the highest branches of 
the tallest trees. You can see there is something 
up there, but as you throw your head back and 
strain through your opera-glass, you fancy it is 
some phantom bird flitting about darkening the 
leaves. The seconds wear into minutes, but you 
dare not move. Your glasses don't help you to 
see through the leaves, but you feel sure that 
something will appear in a moment, over the edge 



BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER. 187 

of that spray or on the end of that bare twig, and 
it won't do to miss it. So when your neckache 
becomes intolerable you fix your eyes immovably 
on the most promising spot, and step cautiously 
backward till you can lean against a tree. The 
support disappoints you, your hand trembles as 
much as ever, and your neck is growing stiff. You 
make a final effort, take your glass in both hands, 
and change your focus, when suddenly a low, fine 
trill that you recognize from being accented on 
the end like a redstart's, comes from a branch sev- 
eral feet higher than before over your head. Your 
neck refuses to bend an inch more. You despair. 
But all at once your tormentor comes tumbling 
through the leaves after an insect that has gotten 
away from him, and you catch one fleeting glimpse 
of orange that more than repays you for all your 
cramps. 

LXIV. 

BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER. 

Like other ladies, the little feathered brides 
have to bear their husbands' names, however inap- 
propriate. What injustice ! Here an innocent 
creature with an olive-green back and yellowish 
breast has to go about all her days known as the 
black - throated blue warbler, just because that 
happens to describe the dress of her spouse ! The 
most she has in common with him is a white spot 



188 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

on her wings, and that does not come into the 
name at all. Talk about woman's wrongs ! And 
the poor little things cannot even apply to the 
legislature for a change of name ! 

You do not blame them for nesting in the 
mountains and the seclusion of northern woods, 
to get away from the scientists who so ignore their 
individuality. For in this case it is not their 
mates who are at fault. They are as pleasing, in- 
offensive birds as any in the warbler family, and 
go about singing their z-ie guttural ^— ^ 

as they hunt over the twigs and £ £ 
branches, without the slightest assmnption of con- 
jugal authority. 

Indeed, I saw one last August suing very hum- 
bly for his little lady's favor. She was either out of 
temper, or else inclined to coquette with him. He 
would fly to her side in a prettily gentle, unobtru- 
sive way, but she would not even sit on the same 
branch with him. Off she woidd go to the next 
tree. And he would meekly follow after ! 

The blue-back has a pretty way of turning up 
his head for a look before he flies to the branch 
above him, or clambering about by the help of a 
stem here, or the side of a sapling there, for, as 
Mr. Burroughs says, he is not a gymnast. He is 
a winning, trustful little bird, and will often stop 
his work as you come by, to look at you. 



YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER. 189 

LXV. 

YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER; MYRTLE WARBLER. 

During migration the yellow-rumped is one of 
the. most abundant warblers. It is a hardy, ro- 
bust-looking bird ; the first of the family to ap- 
peal 4 in the spring, and one of the last to leave in 
the fall. You can recognize an adult male very 
easily in spring, because the black zouave jacket 
he wears over his white vest has conspicuous 
white and yellow side pieces. 

The yellow-rump is a fearless bird, and fre- 
quents undergrowth as well as tree tops, so, if you 
can induce an adult male to keep still long enough 
on a spring morning, you will readily note the 
yellow crown that sets off his slaty-blue back, and 
the white chin that gives the effect of a choker. 
The adult female is dressed in much the same 
way, but is duller, and offers less marked con- 
trasts in color. In the winter, like many other 
birds, they are both much altered — above they 
are washed with umber brown, and below, a paler 
wash of the same obscures their summer mark- 
ings. 

Sometimes you will see large flocks of the yel- 
low-rumped without any other warblers, but as a 
general thing you will discover a few other spe- 
cies, and sometimes there will be a dozen different 
kinds together. The myrtle warbler has a coarse 



190 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

z-ie call, and a trill that is heavier than that of 
the golden warbler. 

LXVL 

CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER. 

When I first saw the chestnut-sided warbler 
he was flitting about the upper branches of the 
saplings in the raspberry patch, about three rods 
away, and I put down his yellow cap and wing 
bars as white, and did not even see the chestnut 
bands along his sides. I noted his pure white 
breast, however, and his loud, cheerful whee-he- 
he, so strikingly unlike the ordinary warbler trill 
or the z-ie tones of some species. The next day, 
after looking him up and finding what ought to 
be there, I discovered, by the help of my glasses, 
what, in fact, seemed little more than a maroon 
line beside the wings. But in a few days I found 
another bird whose chestnut sides were as the 
books would have them, and I felt like shouting 
Eureka ! 

Though I could not detect the nests that should 
have been in the saplings bordering the clearing, 
I found plenty of mother chestnuts leading their 
broods about. They were among the pleasantest 
acquaintances of the summer. Such charming lit- 
tle birds as they are ! 

My first hint of what was going on was the 
sight of one of the dainty little ladies peering at 



MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT. 191 

me from under the leaves and twigs, with a mouth- 
ful of worms. After hunting through the low 
bushes for some time, I ferreted out some bird's 
baby, a grayish mite with light wing bars, and 
wavy shadowy markings across its breast. But it 
was' not until the next day that I had proof that 
it belonged to my bird. While watching some 
vireos in the bushes just in the edge of the clear- 
ing, the mother suddenly appeared. Perking up 
her tail and drooping her wings, she leaned over 
so as to be able to see me, gave a few little ques- 
tioning smacks, and then flew down into the bush 
only a few feet from me, and fed the little bird 
without fear. 

Fear seems to be an instinct, an inheritance 
with her, but her own confidence is strong enough 
to conquer it. Indeed, she is altogether sensible, 
straightforward, industrious, and confiding — a 
captivating, motherly body. 

LXVIL 

MARYLAND YELLOW - THROAT ; BLACK - MASKED 
GROUND WARBLER. 

If your walks lead you through low under- 
brush, weed-grown river banks, alder swamps, or 
other rough, damp places, you will very likely no- 
tice the loud, quick whee - che-tee, whee-che-tee, 
whee-che-tee that betrays the Maryland yellow- 



192 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

throat. He is often shy and you may follow his 
voice for a long time and not get a glimpse of 
the bird, but see him once and you will never for- 
get the picture. You will find him hopping about 
either on the ground or near it> for he is truly a 
ground warbler. 

His back is olive-green, with the chin, throat, 
and breast rich yellow. The forehead is black, 
and there is a peculiar, mask-like, oblong black 
patch on each side of his face that extends from 
the bill back to the neck, and is separated from 
the dark part of the head by a strip of ash. The 
colors of the female are much duller, as she lacks 
the black patch and the bright yellow. 

If you would see the Maryland yellow-throat 
at his best, you must invade the dense tangle of 
an alder swamp, so often the fugitive's last ref- 
uge, where you can get only mosaic glimpses of 
blue sky overhead, and cannot distinguish a per- 
son twenty feet away; where you must push 
through the interwoven boughs, picking your 
steps around bogs, over slippery logs and tree 
trunks, where luxuriant growths of wild grape- 
vine, clematis, and the clinging galium beautify 
the sturdy alders ; where the royal fern, stretch- 
ing above your waist, flowers in obscurity. 

Here, in this secure cover, our little friend 
seems to lose his timidity and blossoms out in the 
full beauty of his nature. We find him singing to 
himself as he runs over the alder boughs, exam- 



THRUSHES. 193 

ining the leaves with the care of a vireo, or clam- 
bering down the side of an alder stalk to hunt at 
its roots. Whr-r~ree f -chee-tee, ichr-r-ree'-chee-tee, 
whr-r-ree 1 -chee-tee^ the cheery rich song comes vi- 
brating through the air, to be echoed from the 
far-off corners of the swamp. We sit down on 
an old moss-covered log to eat our lunch, and in 
answer to my call the sociable little warbler comes 
nearer and nearer till at last he catches sight of 
us. With what charming curiosity he peers down 
at us ! What can be his thoughts of the strange 
intruders as he takes a half circle to inspect us, 
first from one point and then from another ! 

A little further along I come upon a father 
bird who is even more friendly. He is feeding 
his hungry little ones, and goes about in a most 
business-like way hunting for food, but still takes 
time for an occasional warble. He sees me, but, 
after a casual survey, keeps on with his work 
with the calmness of preoccupation, answering 
my call in a naive, off-hand manner that is very 
gratifying. 

Lxvin. 

THRUSHES. 

After spending a morning with a flock of 
warblers, trying to fix your glass on the spot 
overhead where the leaves stirred, striving to 
catch the colors of the cap and wing bars of the 



194 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

little object fluttering through the branches of a 
sapling three or four rods away ; making your 
neck ache looking for the vexatious flitters that 
hunt in the tops of the highest trees ; following 
the hint of a faint chip here, while you keep your 
eye on half a dozen of the rarer warblers that 
have just come in sight over there ; losing track 
of the whole flock as you stop to study the habits 
of one ; and then having to trudge the woods 
over, straining your ears till convinced that you 
are deaf, as you try in vain to catch the chick- 
a-dee-dee of the titmouse, or the yang, yang of 
the nuthatch, which would give a clue to the 
whereabouts of their companions, the runaways 
— after a morning spent in this way, you will 
come back to the thrushes with a feeling of pos- 
itive relief . 

In the first place, they are large enough to be 
seen, and give you the full benefit of their size 
by keeping near the ground. Then, if you find 
one, he is likely to stay and let you inspect him. 
Moreover, it is possible to identify him without 
knowing about each individual tail feather and 
wing marking. Besides all this, you gain self- 
respect in associating with the thrushes. When 
you have chased after a flock of warblers half a 
day, only to find, on. comparing your notes with 
descriptions in the books, that what you saw 
applies equally well to three or four widely dif- 
fering species, your opinion of yourself dwindles 



THRUSHES. 195 

unpleasantly ; depressing doubts creep into your 
mind. But with the thrushes the case is reversed. 
You can write essays in your note-book while they 
sit and look at you. You can arrange their songs 
in flats and sharps to suit your fancy, and they 
will not demur. 

Doubtless, you must treat them with respect. 
But whoever thought of making a noise in the 
presence of a philosopher, or taking liberties with 
a sage? You feel flattered by being allowed to 
watch them at a distance, and when you get home 
and find Ridgway's Manual ready to indorse your 
identifications, your self-respect is restored. 

With the thrushes, our pigeon-holes are filled, 
and it will be well to glance over their labels 
again before leaving them : No. 1, flycatchers ; 
No. 2, crows, jays, etc. ; No. 3, blackbirds, orioles, 
etc. ; No. 4, sparrows, finches, etc. ; No. 5, tana- 
gers; No. 6, swallows ; No. 7, waxwings, etc. ; No. 
8, vireos ; No. 9, wood warblers ; No. 10, wrens, 
thrashers, etc. ; No. 11, creepers ; No. 12, nut- 
hatches and titmice ; No. 13, kinglets, etc. ; No. 
14, thrushes, etc. What a contrast between the 
birds in the first hole and those in the last — 
what a distance between the bony, awkward fly- 
catchers, with their undeveloped voices, and the 
shapely dignified thrushes, the nightingales of 
America ! 

But in their order, the birds of most of the 
pigeon-holes show some obvious, external relation 



196 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

to those in the hole above them. The flycatchers, 
like the crows and jays, are songless birds ; the 
crows and jays are similar to the blackbirds and 
orioles in build and habit ; the blackbirds and ori- 
oles are linked with the sparrows and finches by 
the short, conical - billed bobolink and cowbird ; 
the sparrows and finches resemble the tanagers 
in general build ; the swallows in No. 6 seem to 
stand alone ; but the waxwings resemble the vi- 
reos in elegance and tone of plumage ; the vireos 
approach the wood warblers in size and form ; and 
while there is a natural gap between Nos. 9 and 
10, as two families are omitted, the wrens and 
thrashers are like the creepers in shape of bill 
and general coloring ; and the creeper is closely 
connected with the nuthatch of No. 12, nut- 
hatches and titmice, while the titmice in their 
turn show the nearness of the family to the king- 
lets. These resemblances, however, are mostly 
superficial, not real. 

The several thrushes are so closely allied that 
there is difficulty in discriminating between them, 
and I confess they puzzled me at first. I began 
by studying the wood, the hermit, and the tawny. 
These three all had brown backs, white speckled 
breasts, and beautiful voices. But before long I 
found they could be easily distinguished by varia- 
tions in the shade of brown on their backs, by 
size and arrangement of the speckles, and by the 
quality of their songs. 



THRUSHES. 197 

Coloring of Back, 
The brown of the wood thrush is reddest on 
head and shoulders. 

The brown of the hermit is reddest on the tail. 
The tawny has a uniformly tawny back. 

Speckling of Breast. 

The ivood is heavily speckled with large brown 
spots, except on a plain middle area. 

The hermit, in keeping with his smaller size, 
is less heavily marked, with smaller speckles, and 
has a plain area underneath, as well as on his 
neck and breast. 

The tawny is only lightly spotted on the sides 
of his breast, and has a tawny chin and throat. 

Character of Song. 

The wood has a loud, rich, broken song. 

The hermit's resembles the wood's in quality, 
but is much superior. It has a trill inserted in 
each phrase. 

The tawny has a low sweet song consisting of 
a succession of trills, in descending scale. 

In many places the wood thrush is found in 
the most open ground, and the hermit in the 
densest forest, but this is not always the case. 

The most remarkable of the groups of sweet- 
voiced birds, the thrushes, are perhaps the most 
completely protected, for they are not only incon- 
spicuous in coloring and of quiet habits, but seek 
the shelter of the forest for a home. 



198 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

LXIX. 

wilson's thrush; veery; tawny thrush. 

In Northampton, I have heard the veery sing 
in the orchard by the river, where the catbird, the 
song sparrow, the yellow warbler, and the redstart 
nested, and where the cuckoo, the rose - breasted 
grosbeak, the yellow-throated vireo, and flocks of 
migrating warblers came to call. There it was 
that the catbird tried to imitate the Wilson's 
song. Perhaps the indignity drove the thrush on 
to "Paradise" — in any case, he made his home 
there, choosing the most beautiful places to sing- 
in, and hopping about among the ferns over the 
pine needles that matched the soft brown of his 
coat. 

How well I remember spending one Sunday 
afternoon in the pine grove, sitting where the 
ground was strewn with glistening needles, and 
leaning against a rugged pine trunk flecked by 
the sunlight. And how when the symphony of 
wind spirits softly touching their harp strings 
in the tree tops had soothed every sense into rest 
and peace, across the grove, from the trees on 
the hillside and the bushes by the river in anti- 
phonal chorus, rang out the low trilling chant of 
the veeries. 

Here, at home, I know one Wilson's thrush 
that sings in a locust-tree close to a house by the 



WILSONS THRUSH, 199 

side of the road, apparently indifferent to the 
baying of hounds, as well as the noisy play of 
the children ; but I have also found others that 
were shy, even in the seclusion of an alder 
swamp. 

In our woods there are five haunts of the veery. 
Two are in a dry second growth, one of which is 
on the western exposure of the woods where the 
coldest winds sweep over the hill, and little is 
heard save the woodpecker's reveille and the pen- 
sive note of the wood pewee. Here the thrushes' 
chief occupation is to turn the dry leaves aside 
with their bills, and scratch among them, oven- 
bird fashion, for worms. The three other places 
are moist ferneries, two of them being in the 
most protected part of the woods. One is in the 
partridges' cover, the grove of maple saplings 
where the redstart and the oven-bird nest, and 
the sun streams in to light up great masses of the 
arching hairy mountain fern, and warm the moss- 
covered drumming log of the partridge. An- 
other is an old swamp on whose border a giant 
hemlock stands. Here the red morning sunlight 
creeps up soon after the birds are awake, and 
touches caressingly the smooth trunks of the 
beeches. It always seems as if the veery were 
more sociable here than on the dark western side 
of the woods. If you find one running along on , 
the dark moss, you are sure to see another stand- 
ing among the ferns ; if you stop to see how the 



200 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

sunliglit shimmers through the young hemlocks, 
a friendly kree-ah from a bush near by will pre- 
pare you for the low song that trills in descend- 
ing scale through the cool morning air, and breaks 
the hush of sunrise, as one after another of the 
peaceful songsters takes it up and carries it along. 

In this swamp, on the soft decayed wood in the 
top of an old stump, five or six feet from the 
ground, one of the veeries' nests was found, and 
I think that careful search might have revealed 
others. But although such places seem best 
suited to their tastes, I have found a nest in a lo- 
cality as dissimilar as could be imagined. It was 
on the edge of a raspberry patch where the sun 
beat down nearly all day long. The nest was de- 
serted when I found it. Such a pretty structure 
as it was ! Within a foot or so of the ground, 
wedged in between the sides of a young beech, it 
was made almost entirely of old leaves, and com- 
pletely disguised by the crisp brown ones still 
clinging to the twigs. The lining was of dead 
leaves, roots, and stems. The four eggs were a 
beautiful, unspotted, robin's-egg blue. What a 
pity it seemed that such an attractive little home 
should be broken up ! Who will ever know its 
tragedy! Perhaps the lonely father bird still 
haunts the woods mourning for his little mate ! 

In his own quiet way, the veery is a peculiarly 
sociable bird. So, although his song is the least 
remarkable of the three thrushes, his conversa- 



WILSON'S THRUSH. 201 

tional notes and calls are both varied and numer- 
ous. His regular song is a series of trills descend- 
ing the scale, and may be rendered as a trilled 
trea, trea, trea. Another form of this is tree, 
tree, trum, rea, rea. 

Last spring I was greatly puzzled by hearing 
in the woods what seemed like the bleating of a 
lamb ; and although I soon suspected its source, 
it was some time before I saw the veery making 
this peculiar sound. It resembles a bleat so nearly 
that it can be fairly represented by the syllables 
ba-ah-ah. Mr. Brewster says it is a common note 
from the mountains of North Carolina to Maine 
and Labrador. I have heard it modified into a 
rapid run resembling titaree, As far as I have 
observed, this bleating call is usually connected 
with flight, or motion of some kind. 

The commonest calls of the veery when undis- 
turbed are kree-ah and kree-up. His kree r -whee-a 
is in a higher key and suggests alarm. One day 
I went through the bushes where a family of 
young were hiding. The mother sat on a branch 
looking down whisking her tail in dismay. Whee- 
ah ! she called, and then added in undertone what 
seemed to be a warning, and sounded like be stilly 
he still ! 

Sitting on a stump in the raspberry patch, I 
have drawn a number of veeries about me by imi- 
tating their kree-ah, and one of the rarest forest 
concerts I ever listened to began with this call. 



202 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

It was on a June afternoon, when the sunbeams 
slanted lazily through the heavy summer air, tip- 
ping the fern fronds, and giving a touch of golden 
enchantment to the brown leaves that strewed the 
ground. Kree-ah, kree-up, came the sweet, rich 
call, first from one side and then another, till a 
dozen thrushes gathered. Then from their leafy 
covers rose the grave beautiful song. It seemed 
the choral of a dream, in which each note came 
forth as an inspiration. 

LXX. 

HERMIT THRUSH. 

In literature and in the field the tawny and 
hermit thrushes are constantly confounded. The 
most marked differences have been given, but 
there are a few lesser points that may be of use 
in distinguishing them. The back of the hermit 
is olive, while the tawny, as his name indicates, 
has a tawny back. The hermit has the habit of 
raising his tail and then letting it drop straight 
down, while the tawny raises his tail higher, and 
lowers it only to the horizontal. The hermit is 
shy and solitary ; the tawny sociable and compar- 
atively confiding. The veery nests in various 
places ; the hermit, almost always on the ground 
in a swamp, where he builds with leaves, sedges, 
and moss. 



HERMIT THRUSH. 203 

The call of the tawny is greatly varied, but the 
hermit has a peculiar, nasal chuck, which, Mr. 
Bicknell says, suggests " the note of a distant 
blackbird." 

The low, sweet, trilled song of the tawny bears 
little resemblance to the loud, richly modulated 
song of the hermit ; but as they have been mis- 
taken for each other, it may be well to give the 
approximate relations of time and note in mu- 
sical phrase. Like the song of the tawny, the 
hermit's is divided into three parts, going down 
the scale. But the trill is, here, only the middle 
of each phrase 

Variations from this occur in broken songs, as : 

ah re oo-oo, 

At a little distance this is probably the most 
beautiful song of our woods. Mr. Burroughs 
says that to him it is the finest sound in nature. 
In the Adirondack region the retiring hermit is 
appropriately known as the " swamp angel." 

On the beautiful May morning when we found 
the red-winged blackbirds " fluting their o-ka-lee " 
over the field of cowslips, we went on to the woods 
back of the alder swamp where the wild flowers 



204 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 

were blossoming. Pushing up through the dead 
leaves hundreds of yellow adder tongues turned 
back their petals and darted out their red sta- 
mens ; colonies of spring beauties were springing 
up in the woods, raising their tiny pearl stems, 
spreading out their two slender green leaves, and 
opening their delicate crowning cups of pure 
white or delicate rose. At the foot of the tree 
trunks clusters of " ladies and gentlemen," — 
" squirrels' corn," some call them — looked from 
their luxuriant cover of green leaf filaments. 
And close to the ground lay the children's shin- 
ing red fungus " cups and saucers " to light up 
the woods. But in the midst of all this mute 
loveliness the minstrel of the forest came to sing 
for the flowers their lay of the spring. Sitting 
almost motionless on the dead branch of a fallen 
tree top, the thrush poured forth his ohJ -tir-a-lee- 
lee in ever varying tone and melody, till the woods 
seemed enriched by the marvellous song. 

Each bird seems to voice some phase of nature. 
The bobolink sings for the sunny meadow, the 
vireo for the shaded tree top, the goldfinch for 
the blue sky, the indigo -bird for the passing 
breezes, and the whippoorwill for the night ; but 
the hermit thrush chants the forest Te Deums 
for sunrise and sunset. Ever since I was a child, 
in the long summer evenings we have walked 
through the woods to "William Miller Hill," to 
see the sunset and listen to the hermit's vespers. 



HERMIT THRUSH. 205 

As we went along, watching the red light slant 
across the trunks of the trees, we would some- 
times be thrilled with his song, but not till we 
had reached the brow of the hill overlooking the 
village in the valley, and the dark line of wooded 
hills beyond, not till — 

" The golden lighting of the sinking sun 
O'er which clouds are brightening " — 

had all melted away, the sun dropped behind the 
dark hills, and the rosy cloudlets training across 
the sky had gradually disappeared ; not till the 
afterglow of the sunset was turning to pale serene 
light, would the song of the hermit stir us with 
its full richness and beauty. Then from the 
wooded hillside it w^ould come to us, filling the 
cool evening air with its tremulous yearning and 
pathos, and gathering up into short waves of song 
the silent music of the sunset — nature's benison 
of peace. 



206 



APPENDIX. 



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Grouse. 

Yellow-billed Cuckoo. 

Black-billed Cuckoo. 

Kingfisher. 

Hairy Woodpecker. 

Downy Woodpecker. 

Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. 

Red-beaded Woodpecker. 

Golden-winged Woodpecker. 

Whippoorwill. 

Night-hawk. 

Swift. 

Humming-bird. 



208 APPENDIX. 



GENERAL FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS OF BIRDS 
TREATED. 

CUCKOOS. 
Long slender birds whose breasts are whitish and backs 
brown, with a faint bronze lustre. Bill, long and curved. 
Call, loud and prolonged. Song, wanting. Habits, eccen- 
tric — strange silent birds, living in undergrowth or low 
trees. 

KINGFISHERS. 

Large top-heavy birds with long crests, slate-blue backs, 
and white breasts. Bill, very large and strong for holding 
fish. Flight, rapid and prolonged. Song, a loud hurried 
trill. Fishermen by occupation, they live about rivers and 
lakes, excavating nests in the banks. 

WOODPECKERS. 

Plumage, largely black and white. Bill, strong and long 
for drilling through bark and wood. Flight, noisy, flicker- 
ing. Call, loud and shrill. Song, wanting, except as they 
drum on trees, etc. Habits, phlegmatic, most of time spent 
clinging, erect, to sides of tree trunks. (Exception, yellow 
hammer : plumage, brownish, instead of black and white ; 
song, a loud full trill ; habits, more like ground woodpeck- 
ers ; haunts ant-hills, fields, and fence-posts, etc.) 

GOATSUCKERS. 

Mottled brownish and grayish birds, with tiny bills and 
enormous mouths for catching insects on the wing. Nest, 
wanting — eggs laid on bare ground or leaves. 

SWIFTS. 

Sooty or blackish birds that live on the wing, never 
lighting except in chimneys, towers, or hollow trees where 



APPENDIX. 209 

they roost and nest. Bills small, mouths large, as in the 
goatsuckers. 

HUMMING-BIRDS. 

Diminutive birds whose plumage shows brilliant metallic 
lustre. Bills, slender and elongated for reaching insects 
and* nectar at bottom of flower tubes. Flight, rapid, darting. 

FLYCATCHERS. 

Dull, gray birds with big heads and shoulders. Males 
and females similar in plumage. Bills, hooked at end. 
Songless or with short song (wood pewee, three notes). 
Habits, hunt by lying in wait for insects and then spring- 
ing at them with nervous spasmodic movements. (Excep- 
tion, kingbird.) Largely silent and motionless when not 
watching for food. 

CROWS AND JAYS. 

Large conspicuous birds, with strong bill and claws. 
Songless but clamorous. Active and boisterous — espe- 
cially the blue jay. 

BLACKBIRDS AND ORIOLES. 

Plumage, striking, black prominent. (Exception, meadow- 
lark.) Females generally duller, and in some cases smaller 
than males. Bills and claws, strong ; bills, long and conical. 
(Exceptions, bobolink and cowbird, whose bills are short 
and conical.) 

SPARROWS AND FINCHES. 

Fine songsters. Bills, short, stout, cone-shaped, for crack- 
ing seeds. 

Sparrows, — Comparatively small, dull-plumaged birds, 
with striped backs ; much the color of the ground and 
bushes on which they live — males and females similar. 

Finches, — - Bright-plumaged birds, females duller than 
males. 



210 APPENDIX. 



TANAGERS. 

Shy, brilliantly-colored birds, with dull-plumaged wives. 
They build low, but hunt for worms and sing their loud 
swinging song mostly in the cover of tree tops. 

SWALLOWS. 

Small-billed, big-mouthed insect eaters. Not songless, 
yet without musical power. When not flying they often 
perch on telegraph wires and the ridge-poles of barns. 

WAX WINGS. 

Elegant, delicately- tinted birds. Usually silent and re- 
tiring. They practise among themselves amazing courtesy 
and gentleness. 

VIREOS. 

Small olive-green or gray-backed, white-breasted birds ; 
much the color of the lights and leaf tints they live among. 
Bills, long and slender for holding worms. Songs, loud and 
continuous, from their tree-top covers. Nests pensile and 
delicate. 

WARBLERS. 

Plumage, mostly variegated and brilliant. Females gen- 
erally duller than males. Song, in many cases only a trill. 
Food, insects. Habits, nervous, restless. 

WRENS AND THRASHERS. 

Small and large birds that sing their brilliant songs se- 
cure in the protection of their inconspicuous brown or gray 
dress and the dense thickets or forest undergrowth they 
frequent. As they spend little time in flight their wings 
are short, but the long tails of the thrashers are of great use 
in helping them along from bush to bush. 

CREEPERS. 

Small obscure brown birds that spend their time creep- 



APPENDIX. 211 

ing up and down tree trunks, from which they get their liv- 
ing and in which they nest. Bill long, slender and curved. 
Tails stiff and bristly for bracing them as they work — like 
the woodpeckers'. 

NUTHATCHES AND TITS. 

Small tree birds usually found together in flocks except 
when breeding. 

Nuthatches. — Slate-blue-backed birds that walk sedately 
up and down tree trunks, and run along branches upside 
down, like flies. 

Chickadees. — Fluffy grayish birds that flit among tree 
tops 

KINGLETS. 

Small fluffy greenish birds that flit about the leaves of 
shrubbery and trees after insects. Songs remarkable. 

THRUSHES 

Brown-backed, white-breasted birds, size of robin, or 
smaller. Bills, long and slender, fitted for worm diet. 
Habits, phlegmatic ; pensive birds, fond of sitting motion- 
less. Finest of American songsters. 



ARBITRARY CLASSIFICATIONS OF BIRDS DE- 
SCRIBED. 

I. Birds eound in Certain Localities. 

1. About or near houses. — Robin, chipping sparrow, song 
sparrow, junco, chimney swift, crow blackbird, warbling vi- 
reo, yellow-bellied woodpecker, tree sparrow, brown creeper, 
oriole, phcebe, purple finch, chickadee, catbird, red-eyed vi- 
reo, nuthatch, humming-bird, barn swallow. 

2. In gardens and orchards. — Catbird, bluebird, wax- 
wing, cuckoo, oriole, kingbird, kinglets, humming-bird, 
warbling vireo, yellow-throated vireo, yellow-bellied wood- 



212 APPENDIX. 

pecker, purple finch, goldfinch, summer yellow-bird, war- 
blers, cowbird, least flycatcher, yellow hammer. 

3. In fields and meadows. — Meadow-lark, cowbird, night- 
hawk, crow, bank swallow, barn swallow, cliff swallow, ves- 
per sparrow, field sparrow, bobolink, red-winged blackbird, 
snowflake, song sparrow. 

4. In bushes and clearings. — White-throated sparrow, 
song sparrow, chipping sparrow, tree sparrow, field spar- 
row, white-crowned sparrow, junco, Maryland yellow-throat, 
kinglets, chewink, brown thrasher, rose-breasted grosbeak, 
catbird, robin, purple finch, goldfinch, winter wren. 

5. By streams and rivers. — Phoebe, waxwing, bank swal- 
low, kingfisher, yellow warbler, red- winged blackbird, Mary- 
land yellow-throat, whippoorwill, barn swallow, bank swal- 
low, cliff swallow. 

6. In woods. — Thrushes, wood pewee, oven-bird, black 
and white creeper, woodpeckers, junco, nuthatch, grouse, 
great-crested flycatcher, chewink, whippoorwill, tree spar- 
row, fox sparrow, brown creeper, scarlet tanager, chickadee, 
Blackburnian warbler, crossbills, vireos, redstart, black- 
throated blue warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, winter wren. 

7. Edge of woods. — Rose-breasted grosbeak, cowbird, 
redstart, wood pewee, woodpeckers, kingbird, cuckoo, oven- 
bird, bluebird, humming-bird, chickadee, chewink, great- 
crested flycatcher, brown thrasher, yellow-bellied wood- 
pecker, tree sparrow, white-throated sparrow, white-crowned 
sparrow, fox sparrow, brown creeper, thrasher, vireos, ori- 
ole, purple finch, junco, warblers, yellow hammer, winter 
wren. 

8. Roadside fences. — Bluebird, flicker, kingbird, red- 
headed woodpecker, goldfinch, white - crowned sparrow, 
field sparrow, vesper sparrow, song sparrow, white-throated 
sparrow. 

9. Thickets. — White-throated sparrow, song sparrow, 
Maryland yellow-throat, chickadee, junco, chewink, brown 
thrasher, white-crowned sparrow, field sparrow, catbird, 



APPENDIX. 213 

Wilson's thrush, warblers (in migration), winter wren (in 
migration), chestnut-sided warbler. 

10. Pine woods. — Warblers, kinglets, chickadee, brown 
thrasher, whippoorwill, white-crowned sparrow, crossbills, 
purple finch, nuthatch, woodpeckers. 



II. Size compared with the Robin. 

SMALLER THAN THE ROBIN. 

1. Less than half as large. — Kinglets, chipping sparrow, 
goldfinch, chickadee, nuthatch, warblers, winter wren, least 
flycatcher, humming-bird, tree sparrow, field sparrow, 
brown creeper, yellow-throated vireo, warbling vireo. 

2. About half as large. — Swift, red-eyed vireo, oven-bird, 
crossbills, wood pewee, purple fiuch, song sparrow, junco, 
indigo-bird. 

3. More than half as large. — Phoebe, bluebird, waxwing, 
downy woodpecker, barn swallow, bank swallow, cliff swal- 
low, vesper sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, fox sparrow, 
white-throated sparrow, bobolink, oriole, scarlet tanager, 
snow bunting. 

ABOUT THE SAME SIZE AS THE ROBIN. 

Rose-breasted grosbeak, cowbird, red-headed woodpecker, 
hairy woodpecker, yellow-bellied woodpecker, chewink, 
great-crested flycatcher, red -winged blackbird, catbird, 
thrushes, kingbird. 

LARGER THAN THE ROBIN. 

Yellow hammer, kingfisher, crow, grouse, brown thrasher r 
whippoorwill, meadow-lark, cuckoo, night-hawk, keel-tailed 
blackbird, blue jay. 



214 APPENDIX. 

III. Colors. 

COLORS STRIKING OR BRIGHT. 

1. Blue backs. — Blue jay, bluebird (azure blue), nut- 
hatch (slate-blue), kingfisher (slate-blue), indigo-bird, black- 
throated blue warbler, barn swallow (steel-blue). 

2. Chestnut or red breasts. — Bluebird, robin, crossbills 
(male), scarlet tanager (male), chewink. 

3. Yellow or orange throats. — Blackburnian warbler, Ma- 
ryland yellow-throat, summer yellow-bird, yellow-throated 
vireo. 

4. Yellow or orange breasts. — Yellow - throated vireo, 
summer yellow-bird, goldfinch, oriole, meadow-lark, Black- 
burnian warbler, Maryland yellow-throat. 

5. Red patch on top or back of head in males. — Ruby- 
crowned kinglet, woodpeckers, kingbird. 

6. Red heads (entire head and neck red or madder pink). — 
Red-headed woodpecker, purple finch (old males), crossbills 
(males). 

7. Birds wholly or largely black (males). — Crow, black- 
birds, cowbird, redstart (salmon patches on breast, wings, 
and tail), bobolink (whitish patches on nape of neck and 
back), rose - breasted grosbeak (carmine patch on breast, 
belly white), chewink (white breast, brown sides), oriole 
(orange below). 

COLORS DULL OR PLAIN. 

1. Upper parts olive-green. — Breast unspotted: Kinglets 
(patch of red or yellow in crown), vireos (top of head un- 
marked), tanager (female), crossbills (females). Breast 
spotted : Oven-bird (crown patch orange-brown bordered 
with black). 

2. Upper parts olive-gray. — Cuckoos (tail very long, bill 
curved), great-crested flycatcher. 

3. Upper parts dusky grayish-olive, — Phoebe (length about 



APPENDIX. 215 

seven inches), wood pewee (length about six inches), least 
flycatcher (length about five inches). 

4. Upper parts brown. — a. Back without markings of any- 
kind: Indigo-bird (female), brown thrasher (breast spotted, 
tail very long), Wilson's thrush (breast spotted, tail short), 
hermit thrush (breast spotted, tail short and red), winter 
wren (back barred). 

b. Back more or less streaked : Meadow-lark (below yel- 
low with black collar), female rose-breasted grosbeak (rose 
of male replaced by saffron yellow), bobolink (female and 
male in winter, buffish-yellow below), purple finch (female), 
brown creeper, grouse. 

Sparrows : c. Breast unspotted in adult : Chipping 
(crown brick red), white- throated (yellow spot in front of 
eye), white-crowned (crown-cap of five lines), field sparrow 
(rusty look). 

d. Breast spotted or streaked : Song (no white on tail), 
tree (breast with spot in centre, cap reddish). 

5. General color chiefly black and white. — a. In large 
patches or areas : Snowflake, bank swallow, rose-breasted 
grosbeak (male), redstart (male), chewink (brown sides), 
red-headed woodpecker (head and neck red). 

b. In stripes. Black and white creeper. 

c. In spots (above, white below) : Hairy woodpecker, 
downy woodpecker. 

6. Yellow band across end of tail. — Waxwing (high crest). 

7. White band across end of tail. — Kingbird (low crest). 

8. Crown and throat black (size small). — Chickadee (back 
dull ash-gray) . 

9. General color sooty. — Chimney swift. 

10. General color slate. — Catbird, junco (belly and outer 
tail feathers white). 

BRILLIANT MALES CHANGING TO DULL COLORS OF FE- 
MALES IN AUTUMN. 

Bobolink (becomes almost sparrowy in appearance), gold- 



216 APPENDIX. 

finch (becomes flaxen-brown above and brownish-yellow be- 
low), scarlet tanager (becomes greenish-yellow), yellow- 
rumped warbler (becomes brownish). 

BIRDS SHOWING WHITE ON TAIL FEATHERS IN FLIGHT. 

Meadow-lark, vesper sparrow, junco, chewink (white tri- 
angles on corners of tail), rose-breasted grosbeak, several 
warblers, kingbird (white crescent bordering tail). 

IV. Songs. 

SINGERS. 

1. Particularly plaintive. — Bluebird, white-throated spar- 
row, hermit thrush, meadow-lark, wood pewee. 

2. Especially happy. — Bobolink, song sparrow, goldfinch, 
indigo-bird, chickadee. 

3. Short songs. — Robin, chickadee, bluebird, Maryland 
yellow- throat, meadow-lark, great- crested flycatcher, whip- 
poor will, white-crowned sparrow. 

4. Long songs, with definite beginning, middle and end. — 
Hermit thrush, indigo-bird, thrasher, chewink, song, field, 
tree, fox, white-crowned, and white-throated sparrows. 

5. Long songs, without definite beginning, middle, and end. 
— Purple finch, catbird, goldfinch, warbling vireo. 

6. Long loud songs. — Oriole, scarlet tanager, oven-bird, 
rose - breasted grosbeak, chewink, winter wren, brown 
thrasher. 

TRILLERS. 

(Saying tee-Jca-tee-ka-tee-ka, or words to that effect.) 
Low. — Redstart, summer yellow-bird, black and white 

creeper, junco, chippy, brown creeper, swift (saying chippy- 

chippy -chirid), nuthatch. 

Loud. — Yellow hammer (if-if-if-if-if-if-if), kingfisher 

(alarm), oven-bird (saying teacher). 



APPENDIX. 217 

V. Peculiarities of Flight. 

Conspicuously tail-steering : Keel-tailed blackbird. 

Undulated flight: Goldfinch, woodpeckers, snowbird, blue- 
bird. 

Circling flight : Swallows and night-hawks. 

Labored flight : Bobolink, meadow-lark, sparrows. 

Fluttering flight : Chimney swift. 

Particularly direct flight : Robin, crow, keel-tailed black- 
bird, kingfisher, oriole, blue jay. 

VI. Birds with Habit of Song-Flight. 

Cowbird, bobolink, oven-bird, bluebird, kingbird, swift, 
woodpecker, red-shouldered blackbird, indigo -bird, song 
sparrow, Maryland yellow-throat, meadow-lark, kingfisher, 
cuckoo, goldfinch, night-hawk, purple finch. 

VII. Marked Habits. 

1. Phlegmatic, meditative, fond of sitting quietly. — Wax- 
wing, robin, thrushes, white-throated sparrow, meadow-lark, 
wood pewee, woodpeckers, swallows, kingfisher. 

2. Restless, constantly flitting about. — Winter wren, king- 
lets, chickadee, warblers. 

3. Loquacious. — Catbird, purple finch, crow blackbird, 
blue jay, red-eyed vireo, warbling vireo, oven-bird, swift, 
chippy, bobolink. 

VIII. Birds that Walk instead of Hopping. 

Keel-tailed blackbird, red-winged blackbird, crow,' par- 
tridge, cowbird, oven-bird, meadow-lark. 



218 APPENDIX. 

IX. Shape of Bill adapted to Food. 

1. Short and stout, for cracking seeds. — Grosbeak, cross- 
bills (crossed for getting out spruce and pine seeds), purple 
finch, indigo-bird, junco, snow bunting, bobolink, sparrows, 
chewink. 

2. Long and slender for holding worms. — Thrushes, war- 
blers, orioles, kinglets, brown creeper. 

3. Hooked at end to hold insects. — Vireos, flycatchers. 

4. Long and heavy for drilling holes in trees. — Wood- 
peckers. 

5. Slender and delicate for reaching insects at bottom of 
flower tubes. — Humming-bird. 

6. Large and long for holding fish. — Kingfisher. 

X. Where Certain Birds Nest. 

1. On the ground. — Meadow-lark (meadows and fields), 
white - throated sparrow, partridge, snow bunting, night- 
hawk, bobolink, junco, oven-bird, song sparrow, hermit 
thrush, Maryland yellow- throat, black and white creeper, 
chewink, whippoorwill, vesper sparrow. 

2. In holes. — a. Holes in trees and stubs: Woodpeck- 
ers, nuthatch, chickadee, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher. 

b. Holes in river and other banks : Kingfisher, bank 
swallow. 

3. In orchards. — Kingbird, goldfinch, waxwing, summer 
yellow-bird, chipping sparrow, catbird, robin, blue jay, red- 
start, cuckoo, least flycatcher. 

4. A bout houses, sheds, and barns. — Robin, phcebe, eave 
swallow, chimney swift, bluebird (in knot - holes in out - 
houses or in bird boxes), chipping sparrow. 

5. In bushes. — Cuckoo, chipping sparrow, catbird, rose- 
breasted grosbeak, red-eyed vireo, Wilson's thrush, red- 
winged blackbird, song sparrow, yellow warbler, indigo 
bunting, brown thrasher. 



APPENDIX. 219 

6. In low trees. — Tanager, chestnut-sided warbler, yellow 
warbler, redstart, red-eyed vireo, purple finch, kingbird, 
humming-bird, least flycatcher. 

7. In high trees. — Robin, oriole (especially in elms), 
crow, crow blackbird, purple finch, vireos, wood pewee, 
Bla'ckburnian warbler, crossbills, humming-bird. 

8. In other birds' nests. — Cowbird, cuckoo (rarely). 

9. In crevices of logs or stumps. — Winter wren. 

10. Under bark on trees. — Brown creeper. 

XI. Birds that are seen in Flocks when not Nest- 
ing. 

Cedar-bird, night-hawk, bobolink, white-throated sparrow, 
junco, chickadee (small parties), nuthatch (small parties), 
blue jay (small parties), red-headed woodpecker, crossbill, 
purple finch, bluebird, goldfinch, kinglet, warblers, snowbird, 
blackbird, chimney swift, crow, swallows, vesper sparrow, 
tree sparrow, grouse. 



BOOKS FOR KEFEKENCE. 



A. 0. U. Check-List of North American Birds, 1895, $2.00 ; 
* abridged edition, 25 cents. L. S. Foster, New York. 

Audubon, John James. Birds of America ; Ornithological 
Biography. (Both out of print.) 

Baird, S. F., T. M. Brewer, and R. Ridgway. A History 
of North American Birds. 5 vols. Little, Brown & 
Co., Boston. $48.00. 

Bendire, Chas. E. Life Histories of North American Birds. 
2 vols. Smithsonian Institution, Washington. $15.00. 

Chapman, Frank M. Handbook of Birds of Eastern North 
America. D. Appleton & Co., New York. $3.00; 
pocket edition, $3.50. Bird- Life. D. Appleton & Co., 
New York. $1.75. With colored plates, $5.00. 

Coues, Elliott. Key to North American Birds. Dana Estes 
& Co., Boston. $7.50. 

Elliot, Daniel G. The Gallinaceous Game Birds of North 
America. Francis P.. Harper, New York. $2.50. 

Merriam, Florence A. Birds of Village and Field. Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. $2.00. 

Minot, H. D. The Land-Birds and Game-Birds of New 
England. Second edition, edited by William Brewster. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. $3.50. 

Nehrling, Henry. Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty. 
2 vols. George Brumder, Milwaukee. Unbound, 
$16.00 ; bound, $18.00-$22.00. 

Nuttall, Thomas. A Manual of the Ornithology of the 
United States and Canada. (Out of print.) A Popu- 
lar Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern North 
America, being a new edition of the Manual of Orni- 
thology revised and annotated by Montague Chamber- 
lain. 2 vols. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $7.50. 



222 APPENDIX. 

Ridgway, Robert. A Manual of North American Birds. J. 

B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia. $7.50. 
Wilson, Alexander. American Ornithology. (Out of print.) 
Wright, Mabel Osgood. Birdcraft. The Macmillan Co., 

New York. ©2.50. 
Wright, Mabel Osgood, and Elliott Coues. Citizen Bird. 

The Macmillan Co., New York. $1.50. 

PERIODIC \LS. 

Auk, The. A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology. Published 
for the American Ornithologists' Union by L. S. Foster, 
New York. $3.00 per annum. 

Osprey, The. An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Orni- 
thology. The Osprey Company, New York. $1.00 
per annum. 

BOOKS CONTAINING ORNITHOLOGICAL 

ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 

Bolles, Frank. Land of the Lingering Snow ; At the North 

of Bearcamp Water ; From Blomidon to Smoky. 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. $1.25 each. 
Burroughs, John. Wake-Robin ; Winter Sunshine ; Birds 

and Poets ; Locusts and W T ild Honey ; Pepacton ; Fresh 

Fields ; Signs and Seasons ; Riverby. Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co., Boston. $1.25 each. 
Miller, Olive Thome. Bird Ways ; In Nesting Time ; Little 

Brothers of the Air ; A Bird-Lover in the West ; Upon 

the Tree-tops. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. 

$1.25 each. 
Robinson, Rowland E. In New England Fields and Woods. 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. $1.25. 
Torrey, Bradford. Birds in the Bush ; A Rambler's Lease ; 

The Foot-Path Way ; A Florida Sketch-Book ; Spring 

Notes from Tennessee ; A World of Green Hills. 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. $1.25 each. 



INDEX. 



Ameeican goldfinch, 76-80. 
Arbitrary classification of birds de- 
scribed, 211-219. 

Baltimore oriole, 52-54. 

Bank swallow, 165, 166. 

Barn swallow, 55-57. 

Bay-winged bunting, 171, 172. 

Bee martin, 83-85. 

Belted kingfisher, 57-60. 

Bill, shape of, adapted to food, 218. 

Blackbird, bronzed, 20-27. 
crow, 20-27, 107. 
keel-tailed, 20-27. 
red-winged, 89-92, 107. 

Blackbirds and orioles, general char- 
acteristics, 209. 

Blackburnian warbler, 186, 187. 

Black-capped chickadee, 42-45. 

Black-masked ground warbler, 191- 
193. 

Black-throated blue warbler, 187, 
188. 

Black and white creeping warbler, 
184, 185. 

Bluebird, 14-16. 

Blue jay, 69-75. 

Bobolink, 27-32, 107. 

Bronzed grackle, 20-27. 

Brown creeper, 176, 177. 

Brown thrasher, 150-153. 

Bull-bat, 169-171. 

Bunting, bay- winged, 171, 172. 
snow, 144, 145. 

Bush sparrow, 174, 175. 

Catbird, 18-20. 
Cedar-bird, 112-115. . 
Chestnut-sided warbler, 190, 191. 
Chewink, 115-119. 
Chickadee, black-capped, 42-45. 
Chimney swallow, 16-18. 

swift, 16-18. 
Chip-bird, 60-66. 
Chipping sparrow, 60-66. 
Chippy, 60-66. 
Classification, by colors, 214-216. 



Classification by localities, 211-213. 

by marked habits, 217. 

by nesting habits, 218, 219. 

by peculiarities of flight, 217. 

by shape of bill, 218. 

by size, 213. 

by song, 216. 
Cliff swallow, 166. 
Colors, classification by, 214-216. 
Cowbird, 105-108. 
Creeper, brown, 176, 177. 
Creepers, general characteristics, 210, 

211. 
Crossbills, 166-169. 
Crow, 10-13. 

rain, 46, 47. 

blackbird, 20-27, 107, 108. 
Crows and jays, general characteris- 
tics, 209. 
Cuckoo, 46, 47. 
Cuckoos, general characteristics, 208. 

Devil- down-head, 100-105. 
Downy woodpecker, 99, 100. 

Eave swallow, 166. 

Field sparrow, 174, 175. 
Finch, grass, 171, 172. 

purple, 122, 123. 
Finches, general characteristics, 209. 
Fire-bird, 52-54. 
Flicker, 48-51. 
Flight, peculiarities of, 217. 
Flycatcher, great-crested, 163-165. 

kingbird, 83-85. 

least, 87-89. 
Flycatchers, general characteristics, 

209. 
Fox sparrow, 175, 176. 

Goatsuckers, general characteristics! 

208. 
Golden-crowned thrush, 132-138. 
Golden robin, 52-54. 
Golden warbler, 179, 180. 
Goldfinch, American, 76-80. 



224 



INDEX. 



Grackle, bronzed, 20-27. 
Grass finch, 171, 172. 
Great-crested flycatcher, 163-165. 
Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 153, 154. 
Grouse, ruffed, 32-35. 

Hair-bird, 60-66. 
Hairy woodpecker, 92-98. 
Hangnest, 52-54. 
Hemlock warbler, 186, 187. 
Hermit thrush, 202-205. 
Humming-bird, ruby-throated, 36-40. 
Humming-birds, general characteris- 
tics, 209. 

Indigo-bird, 119-122. 

Jay, blue, 69-75. 

Jays, general characteristics, 209. 

Junco, 138-140. 

Keel-tailed blackbird, 20-27. 
Kingbird, 83-85. 
Kingfisher, belted, 57-60. 
Kingfishers, general characteristics, 

208. 
Kinglets, 140-144. 

general characteristics, 211. 

Lark, meadow, 40-42. 
Least flycatcher, 87-89. 
Localities, classification by, 211. 

Marked habits, 217. 
Martin, bee, 83-85. 

sand, 165, 166. 
Maryland yellow-throat, 191-193. 
Meadow-lark, 40-42, 107, 108. 
Myrtle warbler, 189, 190. 

Nesting habits, classification by, 218, 

219. 
Night-hawk, 169-171. 
Nuthatch, white-bellied, 100-105. 
Nuthatches, general characteristics, 

211. 

Orange-throated warbler, 186, 187. 
Oriole, 52-54, 107, 108. 
Orioles, general characteristics, 209. 
Oven-bird, 132-138. 

Partridge, 32-35. 

Peculiarities of flight, 217. 

Pewee, wood, 85-87. 

Phoebe, 80-83. 

Pigeon-holes for perching birds, 206, 

207. 
Purple finch, 122, 123. 

Rain crow, 46, 47. 
Red-eyed vireo. 124-129. 



Red-headed woodpecker, 159, 160. 

Redstart, 180-184. 

Red-winged blackbird, 89-92. 107, 

108. 
Reed-bird, 27-32. 
Rice-bird, 27-32. 
Robin, 4-10. 

golden, 52-54. 
Rose-breasted grosbeak, 153, 154. 
Ruby- throated humming-bird, 36-40. 
Ruffed grouse, 32-35. 

Sand martin, 165, 166. 
Sapsucker, yellow-bellied, 160-163. 
Scarlet tanager, 146-150. 
Shape of bill adapted to food, 218. 
Size compared with the robin, 213. 
Slate-colored snowbird, 138-140. 
Snowbird, slate-colored, 138-140. 
Snow bunting, 144, 145. 
Snowflake, 144, 145. 
Social sparrow, 60-66. 
Songs, classification by, 216. 
Song flight, 217. 
Song sparrow, 66-68. 
Sparrow, bay-winged, 171, 172. 

bush, 174, 175. 

chipping, 60-66. 

field, 174, 175. 

fox, 175, 176. 

junco, 138-140. 

social, 60-66. 

song, 66-68. 

tree, 172,173. 

vesper, 171, 172. 

white-crowned, 173, 174. 

white-throated, 109-111. 
Sparrows, general characteristics, 

209. 
Summer yellow-bird, 179, 180. 
Swallow, bank, 165, 166. 

barn, 55-57. 

chimney, 16-18. 

cliff, 166. 

eave, 166. 
Swallows, general characteristics, 

210. 
Swift, chimney, 16-18. 
Swifts, general characteristics, 208, 
209. 

Tanager, scarlet, 146-150. 
Tanagers, general characteristics, 

210. 
Tawny thrush, 198-202. 
Thistle-bird, 76-80. 
Thrasher, brown, 150-153. 
Thrashers, general characteristics, 

210. 
Thrush, golden-crowned, 132-138. 
hermit, 202-205. 
tawny, 198-202. 



INDEX. 



225 



Thrush, veery, 198-202. 

Wilson's, 198-202. 
Thrushes, general characteristics, 
193-197, 211. 

means of distinguishing, 197. 
Titmouse, 42-45. 
Tits, general characteristics, 211. 
Towhee, 115-119. 
Tree sparrow, 172, 173. 

Veery,' 198-202. 

Vesper sparrow, 171, 172. 

Vireo, red-eyed, 124-129. 

warbling, 131, 132. 

-yellow-throated, 129, 130. 
Vireos, general characteristics, 210. 

Warblers, blackburnian, 186,187. 

black-masked ground, 191-193. 
black-throated blue, 187, 188. 
black and white creeping, 184, 

185. 
chestnut-sided, 190, 191. 
golden, 179, 180. 
hemlock, 186, 187. 
Maryland yellow-throat, 191- 

193. 
myrtle, 189, 190. 
orange-throated, 186, 187. 
redstart, 180-184. 
summer, 179, 180. 
yellow, 179, 180. 



Warblers, yellow-rumped, 189, 190. 

general characteristics, 178, 
179, 210. 

where to look for, 179. 
Warbling vireo, 131, 132. 
Waxwing, 112-115. 
Waxwings, general characteristics, 

210. 
Whippoorwill, 155. 
White-bellied nuthatch, 100-105. 
White-crowned sparrow, 173, 174. 
White-throated sparrow, 109-111. 
Wilson's thrush, 198-202. 
Winter wren, 155-159. 
Woodpecker, downy, 99, 100. 

hairy, 92-98. 

red-headed, 159, 160. 

yellow-bellied, 160-163. 
Woodpeckers, general characteristics, 

208. 
Wood pewee, 85-87. 
Wren, winter, 155-159. 
Wrens, general characteristics, 210. 

Yellow-bellied sapsucker, 160-163. 
YeUow-bird, 76-80. 

summer, 179, 180. 
Yellow hammer, 48-51. 
Yellow-rumped warbler, 189, 190. 
Yellow-throated vireo, 129, 130. 
Yellow warbler, 179, 180. 



; 



v 3 98*09 tOO 




